The Ancient Pages
by hbndgirl
Summary: Frank and Joe are asked to solve the mystery of a missing page from an illuminated manuscript. At the same time - and apparently unrelated to the Hardy Boys' case - Nancy is called on to solve a similar mystery. Before long, they realize that the two mysteries are related and are a lot more sinister than they seem. Complete.
1. The Wind of Mystery

Chapter I: The Wind of Mystery

Frank

It was a windy day in Bayport, with the stiff breeze bringing the scent of salt to every corner of our small town. My brother Joe and I hadn't had a case to work on for a couple of weeks. That and a salty sea breeze are always a bad combination to me. Whenever it happens, I always find myself wishing for an adventure to come my way.

Of course, it doesn't happen all that often. A few weeks without a case, that is. My name's Frank Hardy. My brother, Joe, and I are amateur detectives, and adventures always seem to be following us. I admit, we do a healthy bit of seeking them out, but whether we're looking for them or not, they always find us. I think it runs in the family. Our dad, Fenton Hardy, has been a private detective ever since he left the NYPD and came to live in Bayport, and he's got some pretty thrilling stories to tell about his own adventures.

But this was the start of one of Joe's and mine, believe it or not. The scent of adventure wasn't the only thing the wind was blowing it.

I was on the beach when the wind came up, so I got the full effect of it. My girlfriend, Callie Shaw, had wanted to paint a seascape on the beach. She's very artistic and very passionate about it. When the wind sprang up, though, that endeavor went south.

"Oh!" Callie said as the breeze caught her canvas and pulled it from the easel.

I jumped to try to save it, but I was too late. It landed painted-side-down in the sand. Callie picked it up and looked at damage, disappointment showing in her brown eyes.

"It's ruined," she said. "Everywhere that the paint wasn't dry, there's sand sticking to it. I'll never be able to get it off."

I looked over her shoulder at the painting. It was really good – like all of Callie's work. The picture was still clear, but as Callie had said, there was sand stuck in several places.

"Maybe it's all right," I ventured. "I mean, it's a seascape. The sand kind of fits. Who knows? You might start a new fad in the art world."

Callie sort of half-grinned. I'm pretty sure when she does that, she thinks I've said something kind of funny, but completely wrong. That happens a lot when I try to talk about art to her. Hey, just because I've foiled a few art heists and stopped several art forgers doesn't mean I know everything about art itself.

"I don't think so, Frank," she said. "At least, it doesn't sound like my style." She looked up at the bay and the wind swept her blond hair back away from her face. "I guess my endeavors are hopeless in this kind of wind. We might as well go home."

I was a little disappointed. What with trailing mysteries to the ends of the earth, I don't get a lot of chances to go on an uninterrupted date with Callie. Now without smugglers or kidnappers to get in way, it looked like the wind was going to cut things short.

"Are you sure you don't want to go get a cup of coffee or something?" I asked hopefully.

Callie turned away from her painting to smile at me. "Why not?"

I helped her carry her ruined canvas, easel, and other painting paraphernalia back to my car. Well, Joe and I share it at the moment. Mom and Dad say that when I go to college, we can each get our own car. For now, they don't need an extra one on their insurance policy, which is already high enough with all the car trouble we have. Anyway.

We went to the Crème and Sugar, a little coffee shop off the main drag of the town. It's usually quiet in there, and the Bayport High crowd doesn't hang around much, except for a few couples who are on dates. Today, Callie and I were the only customers besides two old guys who were sitting at a corner table, chatting about the good ole days.

After we ordered at the counter, we went to sit at a table along the far wall from the door. The setup worked that the waitress would bring us our coffee when it was ready.

"I was hoping I could enter that seascape in a contest that the university over in Layson is holding," Callie told me. "The theme this year is the sea. I guess I'll have to figure something else out now."

I didn't understand why she couldn't just repaint the picture she'd been working on, but that didn't seem to be the way she worked. "Maybe you could paint some coral. It would be a great chance to learn more about it. Besides, it would make a great picture." If you haven't guessed, I'm a little bit of a science nerd. Okay, maybe a lot of science nerd.

"I guess so," Callie said, but she didn't sound very interested.

One of the guys at the other table said good-bye to his friend and left. The other sat for a minute longer. He drank a couple more gulps of coffee as his glance wandered around the room. After a second, his eyes caught mine. He started – maybe he was surprised. He finished off his coffee, and then he got up and came over to my table.

"Excuse me," he said with old-fashioned politeness. "I don't want to interrupt – but are you one of Fenton Hardy's boys?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I'm Frank Hardy. This is Callie Shaw. Do you need something?"

"I hear you and your brother like working on puzzles," the man said. "I've got one I was wondering if you'd be interested in taking a crack at."

Callie sighed so softly that I just barely heard her, but I leaned forward. Especially on a day like today, there was no way I was going to turn down a "puzzle."

"What kind of a puzzle?" I asked.

The man took the question as an invitation to sit down, and he pulled up a chair from a nearby table. "The name's Evan Sinclair. I've got a treasure that maybe you could help me find."

I urged him to tell me the whole story. Callie leaned back in her chair and looked down in her hands. I felt bad, realizing that she wasn't too interested in lost treasures or any of the other things I was always getting mixed up in.

"Hold on, Mr. Sinclair," I said. "My brother, Joe, will want to hear this, too. It would be best if he heard it straight from you. Would you be willing to come by our house this evening to talk about it?"

"Fair enough," Evan Sinclair agreed. "What say seven?"

That sounded good to me. I gave him the address, and he went meandering on his way. Just then, the waitress brought our coffee. I tried to change the subject to anything besides the mystery, but my mind couldn't focus on anything else. Callie, too, seemed distracted, and as soon as we'd finished our coffee, I took Callie home.

When I got to our house at the corner of High and Elm Streets, I found the place pretty much deserted except for Joe. He was outside talking to something up in one of the trees in our lawn.

"What are you doing?" I asked, getting out of the car.

Joe rolled his eyes and pointed up in the tree. "Playback," he said. "He took my phone again and then flew out the window. Why'd you have to teach him that trick in the first place?"

"Me?" I asked. "I didn't teach him. You're the one who wanted him to bring your phone to you when you forget it in your room."

Joe shrugged. "Can I help it if I forget things sometimes? Besides Playback's gotta do something to earn his keep."

Playback is our parrot. I guess technically he's _my_ parrot. I volunteered to take him after his owner turned out to be the culprit in one of our cases. Since then, he's honestly been more of a pain than anything else.

"How are we going to get him down?" Joe asked.

"Stop acting like you want him to come down," I recommended. "Meanwhile, we've got a mystery to work on."

"Really?" Joe asked, seeming to forget Playback and his phone. "What kind of a mystery? It's been so boring around here."

"I don't have any details," I admitted. "Some guy named Evan Sinclair says that he's got a treasure hunt for us. He's going to come around at seven to tell us about it."

Joe rubbed his hands together. "This is great! I hope it's something good."

Playback must have gotten bored without us paying attention to him. He doesn't like to be left out of anything. With a whirring of wings, he flew down and landed on my shoulder.

"Hey, it worked, Frank," Joe said. Then he noticed that Playback's claws were empty. "Where's my phone?"

"He must have left it up there," I replied.

Joe sighed. "Now how will I get it down?"

"I guess you'll have to climb," I told him.


	2. Colonist's Treasure

Chapter II: Colonist's Treasure

Joe

"Tell us about this treasure," I said.

I was talking to Evan Sinclair, the guy Frank had met earlier that day. He was a funny sort of guy – he looked like he was about a thousand years old, but he didn't act like it. He didn't even use a cane. He'd also come carrying a briefcase. Seriously, who does that these days?

Right now, he was sitting on the couch in our living room, drinking the lemonade that Frank had gotten for him. Mom and Dad were at a get-together with some of Dad's old friends from the NYPD, and Aunt Trudy – whoops, I mean Aunt Gertrude – was playing cards with some of her friends. Aunt Gertrude, Dad's sister, has lived with us for years. Mom and Dad always call her by her nickname, Trudy, but she doesn't think Frank and I should. Something about kids shouldn't have nicknames for adults, or something like that.

So that meant it was just Frank, me, and Evan Sinclair. Oh, and Playback. But I wasn't on speaking terms with him after he swiped my phone. I mean, we're detectives; our parrot should know better than to turn to a life of crime. Right now, though, he was sitting on his perch in the living room, throwing his less-than-intelligent comments into our conversation.

Mr. Sinclair picked up a pen from the stand he was sitting next to and began playing with it, twirling it up and down his fingers. It was impressive, but I was more interested in hearing what he had to say.

"I might have been a little hasty saying 'treasure' earlier today," Mr. Sinclair began. "I guess I don't really know for sure that there is a treasure."

I glanced at Frank, raising an eyebrow to tell him, "What kind of treasure hunt doesn't actually have a treasure?" He didn't respond. He just kept waiting patiently for Sinclair to explain.

"You see," Sinclair went on. "My ancestors were some of the first English settlers along here. You've probably heard about how a small number of settlers came to Barmet Bay and founded what would become Bayport someday? My ancestors were among them. One of them, a Jeremiah Clancey, brought with him a page from an illuminated manuscript."

"You mean like the ones monks would make in old monasteries?" Frank asked.

"Yes, exactly," Sinclair said. "The story went that this one was part of a book that told where an ancient treasure was hidden. The treasure is supposed to have been worth so much that the pages were divided up so that no one person could get their hands on it."

"I thought illuminated manuscripts were usually of the Bible and other religious books," Frank commented. "Not treasure maps."

"Treasure maps," Plackback squawked.

"That's true," Sinclair admitted. "Maybe this one was primarily a religious book but it had a coded message worked in somehow. It wouldn't be hard to do, if you've ever seen what an illuminated manuscript looks like."

I was starting to not like this guy. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was that he had promised a treasure hunt, and now it looked like he just had one piece of the treasure map. Maybe it was the way he cut his hair. Maybe it was the way he only had drunk half a glass of lemonade in all this time.

"So where is this page from this manuscript?" I asked. "Do you want us to decode it or something?"

"No, I want you to find it," Sinclair replied. "There's no record of anyone in the family having had it since Jeremiah Clancey's grandson, Walter Clancey. Walter must have hidden it, or maybe one of his children or grandchildren did."

"It could have accidentally been destroyed," Frank commented.

"It could have been," Sinclair admitted. "I want the two of you to find out for sure."

Okay, this was really not sounding very cool now. Now we were supposed to look for a piece of paper that may or may not exist – may or may not have ever existed – that may or may not have one clue that theoretically should not be enough to find the treasure that the clue may or may not lead to, and on top of all of that, the treasure itself may or may not exist. I mean, I like a good mystery with the best of them, but unsolvable mysteries? Those are just frustrating.

Frank must have been thinking the same thing, because he asked, "Have you gathered up the other pages, Mr. Sinclair? It doesn't sound like you'll have much luck finding the treasure without them."

"Treasure, treasure," Plackback threw in. I looked at him with an annoyed expression, but that bird isn't any good at reading facial expressions.

Sinclair set the pen back down on the stand and looked at each of us intently in turn. "I would have thought better of the two of you, considering your reputation. This isn't about some legendary treasure. The page itself is a treasure worth thousands of dollars. If it's survived, then it's survived hundreds of years, a crossing of the Atlantic, and would now be rediscovered."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't thought about it like that. "I guess you're right. Well, what clues are there to it? Do you have any?"

"I wouldn't be coming to you if I didn't," Sinclair replied. "In all probability, the page would be hidden somewhere around where my ancestors lived."

"That would be hard to find out after three hundred years," Frank pointed out.

"Hard to prove," Sinclair corrected him. "My ancestors lived in this area up until the early nineteen hundreds in a house that was passed down through several generations. It's very possible that that's where the original Clanceys lived. If so, I know exactly where they lived. If not, Walter Clancey's journal has been handed down through the family. Besides mentioning the page, which is how I know he had it, he also gives a detailed description of his home. It may be possible to identify it from that."

Frank nodded. "It might be. Things have changed enough, though, that it won't be easy."

"That also doesn't tell us exactly where the page is," I threw in. "Wherever these people lived, there's a lot of area 'around' where they could have hid just one little piece of paper."

"That's true," Sinclair admitted. "There may be some clue in the journal. It's much too old to have brought along, but I had Photostats made of every page and I have them with me. If you are willing to work on this mystery, I'll be glad to leave them."

"It's a start," Frank replied. "Where was the family homestead?"

"It was up the coast a little ways to the north, and then inland a little ways," Sinclair said. "The road it's on is called Mykay Road. Do you know it?"

I nodded. "Yeah. We've gone out there in connection to a few cases before."

"Good," Sinclair said. "The place is deserted now. People around here would know it as the Mykay place. The road was named after my people."

He pulled a big stack of papers out of his briefcase and handed them to Frank. Everyone always seems to assume that since Frank is older he's the head of operations. What's so hard to get about the concept that we're equal in this whole mystery-solving thing?

"These are the Photostats of the journal," Sinclair explained. "I've numbered all the pages. The description of Clancey's home is on pages fifty-eight to sixty-three. I'm afraid there's not much more I can tell you, though. Do you think there's anything you can do with this?"

Frank skimmed through a few pages before he replied, "I think so. At any rate, we'll do the best we can."

Sinclair said he had to leave and thanked us profusely. Then Frank and I got down to business looking at the journal pages and talking about our client.

"I'm not so sure about that guy," I confessed. "There was something about him I didn't trust."

"Hmm," Frank mused. "That so? Anything specific?"

I shook my head. "No, just a hunch, I guess."

Frank looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. By now, we both know each other's strengths pretty well. Frank knows that I've got a pretty good instinct about people, so when I don't trust someone, he takes that seriously.

"I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on him," Frank decided. "If he's hiding something, then this just might turn into some mystery."

"Can't argue with you there," I agreed.

Then we started reading the journal pages in earnest. The looked legit, but that wasn't too surprising. Even if Sinclair wasn't for real, it wouldn't have made sense for him to start us on a treasure hunt that he didn't at least think was legit.

The handwriting was hard to read. It was all cramped and old-fashioned, so our eyes started getting tired long before we'd gotten through much of it. We hadn't even gotten to the description of the Clancey homestead by the time the door opened and Mom and Dad walked in. We looked up at the clock on the wall in surprise – it was already half past eleven.

"What are you two working on?" Dad asked.

We explained the whole thing to them. Mom and Dad are really great about Frank and me solving mysteries. Even though we get into some crazy and dangerous stuff, they don't make us stop. Sure, they worry about us, but they realize that we wouldn't be happy without a case to work on. Besides that, most of our mysteries really help people out of some tight jams. I think Mom and Dad are proud of us for that.

"A treasure hunt sounds fun – and safe," Mom commented when Frank finished. As I said, she does worry.

"Maybe," Frank replied. He must have still been thinking about what I said about Sinclair.

I stretched my back, which was getting sore from leaning over the pages. "Let's hit the sack and tackle this in the morning. Say, why isn't Aunt Trudy back yet?"

Dad shrugged. "This isn't the first time one of her pinochle games have gone this late. She'll be back before long."

Frank began gathering up the pages that had the description of the Clancey place and took them to the copier.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"It wouldn't hurt to have an extra copy," he commented. "Besides, I want one that I can write on."

Frank's like that, always making notes and stuff. That's probably why he both gets better grades than me and is better at remembering the finer details of cases. Not that I forget – it's just that sometimes things get moving too fast.

Later that night, I woke up to the sounds of someone moving around downstairs. At first, I thought it must just be Aunt Trudy coming back. Then it struck me as strange that she'd only be getting back this late. I grabbed my phone off of my desk to check the time. It was half past two. There was no way a pinochle game could go that late.

Throwing a bathrobe over my pajamas, I crept out my door and downstairs. I could hear the person in the living room, rustling some papers. The journal! It had to be.

I stood in the doorway of the living room, cutting off his escape. My plan was to flip the light on to surprise him and then pounce on him. The first part went fine – I switched on the light and he was surprised. The second part didn't – before I could even move, he dashed straight at me, shoved me so hard I lost my balance, and then made his escape with the journal Photostats out the front door before I could stop him.


	3. Craig Miller's Mystery

Chapter III: Craig Miller's Mystery

Nancy

"It's nice to be home," I said as I flopped down across my bed.

My dog, Togo, jumped up next to me and licked my face. Laughing and making a face to try to keep dog slobber out of my mouth, I scratched his ears.

"I'm happy to see you, too, Togo," I told him.

Maybe one of the best things about coming home is the enthusiastic greeting Togo always gives me. He has to give me one a lot, though, since I'm away so much. I'm Nancy Drew, an amateur detective. My cases have taken me all over the world, and they always seem to come up one after another.

I'd just gotten back from a case in Los Angeles. A friend of a friend was having some trouble with a "haunted" house. Naturally, the ghost turned out to be human, but that's another story. Right now, I was enjoying a few hours without a mystery, although I also couldn't help wondering what I was going to do with myself. Little did I know that within a few minutes that wouldn't be a worry any longer.

"Nancy?" Hannah called up the stairs. "Do you want a snack?"

Hannah Gruen has been our housekeeper ever since my mom died when I was little. She's done her best to fill mom's shoes as far as I'm concerned, and honestly she's done a fantastic job.

"One of your lemon bars sound wonderful right now," I called back down. "I don't suppose you have any?"

"I made a batch just this morning," Hannah replied. "I figured you'd want some."

"In that case, I'll be right down," I said.

I jumped up off of my bed and was about to hurry out of my room when I happened to notice my phone lying on the nightstand. That reminded me that I'd promised to call my boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, as soon as I got home.

Just as I was reaching for my phone, it rang with the familiar ringtone that I had set for my dad. My dad's name is Carson Drew. He's a lawyer in our hometown of River Heights, and one of the best at that.

"Hi, Dad," I said, swiping the screen to answer. "I made it back from LA just fine. Wait till you hear about it."

"I can't wait, Nancy," Dad replied. "You can tell me all about it at supper tonight. Just now, though, I was wondering if you'd be interested in coming down to my office."

"What for?" I asked. "Do you think I'm in need of a lawyer?"

"Nancy," Dad said, pretending to sound offended. "You'd think you didn't want to see me. Seriously, though, I just might have found a mystery for you."

"Really?" I said, perking up. After exactly seventeen hours and thirty-eight minutes without a mystery, I was more than ready for a new one. "What kind of a mystery?"

"I'm not actually sure yet, to tell the truth," Dad admitted. "A man called my office, hoping to find a way to get in touch with you. I told him I'd set up an appointment for you and me to talk to him at my office. He insisted on making it as early as possible, as in twenty minutes from now."

"In that case, I'll be over right away," I said.

When I got downstairs, Hannah had a lemon bar dished up on a plate. It only takes about five minutes to drive to Dad's office from our house, so I decided I could take the time to eat the lemon bar and brief Hannah on the latest happening. She shook her head, although I could tell she wasn't surprised that a new case had already come my way.

Just before I pulled my blue Mustang convertible out of our driveway, I texted Ned to tell him that I'd gotten home safely but that I wouldn't be able to call him until later. I hoped that he wouldn't mind, but then again, if he minded things like that, he would have broken up with me a long time ago. It seems like no matter what kind of plans we have, a mystery always pops up and gets in the way. Fortunately, though, Ned likes helping me on cases and comes with me on sleuthing ventures whenever he can.

I got to Dad's office a little before the twenty-minute mark. Even though the man with the mystery could be arriving any minute, Dad started asking me all about my latest case. He's great like that. Even though a lot of my cases turn out to be dangerous and it worries him, he knows how important it is to me and always takes an interest.

I was just starting to tell him how the haunting had been rigged when the prospective client arrived. He was a middle-aged man of about forty, forty-five. He shook hands with Dad and me as he introduced himself as Craig Miller.

"I really appreciate both of you taking time out of your day to meet with me," he said. "I suppose my mystery's not terribly urgent, but it also isn't something that I'm expecting you to spend all your time on, Miss Drew."

I tried to hide a smile. Whenever there's a mystery, I can't help but spend every minute that I can working on it. I didn't say that, though, and instead told him, "What is your mystery?"

"Well," Mr. Miller began, "perhaps you've seen some of the beautiful works from the twelfth century that are housed in the River Heights Library?"

"Yes, I have," I replied. "In fact, when they were donated to our library by a library over in the UK, the custodians of our library couldn't believe it. They asked me to look into it and make sure the deal was on the up and up."

"Excellent," Mr. Miller said. "Then you've already seen the one page that is by itself up close."

I remembered that there was one leaf of an illuminated manuscript that had come with the four other books. I told him I had.

"Do you know where this page came from?" Mr. Miller asked, leaning forward in his chair intently.

"No, not exactly," I replied. "It had been in the British library's collection for years, and they didn't know exactly what volume it had come from, although it's part of the Gospel of John."

"Right, that's what it is," Mr. Miller agreed. "But it's also a part of a book that tells where an ancient treasure worth millions is hidden."

The man looked like he was in earnest, but I couldn't help being skeptical. "I don't think that's the kind of treasure the Gospels are supposed to lead you to."

Mr. Miller laughed, and my Dad grinned a little, but I was being serious. This didn't sound like an altogether plausible scenario.

"You're right there," Mr. Miller agreed. "You see, there are secret, coded messages worked into the pages in one way or another. The messages give the location of the treasure, but the story goes that you needed all of them, from every page. I've spent years trying to track down as many pages as I could. I've found three of them, but the problem is that I can't make heads or tails out of any of them. I've heard that you're pretty good at cracking codes, Miss Drew, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a shot at this one."

"Are you trying to find the treasure then?" I asked.

"That's the hope, of course, although at this point I'm starting to think I maybe won't be able to," Mr. Miller replied. He looked down at his hands and then back up at me. "Maybe – even if I'm not the lucky one to find the treasure – maybe the work I've done on the mystery so far will help someone else find it. You see, I don't want the treasure for myself. I just want to find it, or the very least to help find it."

In my experience, finding a treasure just for the sake of finding a treasure isn't something that is on very many people's bucket lists. On the other hand, I'm not really one to talk – I've found several treasures and I haven't wanted to keep any of them so far.

I looked at my Dad to see if he could give any indication of what he thought. He nodded.

"All right, Mr. Miller, I'll see what I can do," I said. "I won't promise any miracles – if you've been trying to crack these codes for years, I don't know that I'll be able to do it very quickly either."

"That's fine," Mr. Miller replied, his face brightening. "As I said, it's not urgent. I have pictures of the other two pages that I've gotten a look at. I can also send you digital copies if you want to look at them with a projector or something."

"The print copies will be fine," I assured him.

He handed me two photographs. Both of them showed pages that were similar to the one that I had already seen in the River Heights Library. The illustrations and the letters themselves were beautiful – you could look at them for hours before you read the words on the page.

Mr. Miller wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me, saying, "This is my cell phone number. You can get hold of me any time this way. I'm going to have to leave town this afternoon, but I do want to hear about anything you learn."

"I'll call you when I find something out," I promised.

Mr. Miller shook hands with Dad and me again and left the room. After he'd gone, Dad turned to me with a teasing look in his eye.

"This doesn't sound like such an exciting mystery after all," he said.

I grinned back at him. "A mystery's a mystery, even if I don't get to travel the world or chase down bad guys."


	4. A Middle English Cipher

Chapter IV: A Middle English Cipher

Nancy

"You need to start a group text or something just to keep us updated on your mystery-solving status," Bess complained, leaning her forehead against my headrest, which happened to be in the seat right in front of her. "You know, something short like 'New mystery,' 'Mystery solved,' 'Off to the Sahara,' 'Back home,' 'Currently being held prisoner.' That kind of thing."

"Bess, I doubt Nancy would be worried about posting a new status if she was being held prisoner," replied George, who was sitting next to Bess in the backseat.

Bess Marvin and George Fayne are cousins, best friends, and my partners in crime-solving. Sometimes, though, they can't come with me when I go to work on a case, and then they invariably tease me about not ever knowing what I'm doing or where I am.

Today they weren't going to have the same problem. The minute Craig Miller had left Dad's office, I had called Bess, George, and Ned to ask them to come to the library with me to take a look at the manuscript page. I had picked them all up in my convertible and was telling them about my last case on the way to the library. We had just pulled up in front.

"Just kidding, George," Bess replied to her cousin's comment. "You don't have to take everything so seriously."

"Can I see the pictures of those other manuscript pages, Nancy?" asked Ned, who was sitting in the passenger seat in front.

I pulled the photos out of my purse and handed them to him. "You'll be able to help me a lot on this mystery, Ned. Didn't you take a class on medieval manuscripts last semester?"

"Mm-hmm," Ned replied, looking at the pictures closely. "Although that doesn't make me an expert by a long shot."

"Let's go look at the manuscript," George said, opening her door.

The rest of us followed her. We were greeted at the front desk by Dave Evans, who was working a summer job at the public library. Dave's a friend of Ned's from college, and he and Bess date off and on.

"Hey, everybody, what's up?" he said.

"Guess," Bess replied. "I'll bet you can get it on the first try."

"You're coming to visit me?" Dave guessed.

"Nope," George said. Then she turned to Bess with a grin. "You sure lost that bet."

"We want to look at the twelfth century manuscripts," I told Dave. "It's for a mystery. Any chance you can give us a personal tour?"

"Sure thing," Dave said. "Just let me get someone to man the front desk here."

He asked a girl who was reshelving books to cover for him, and then led us upstairs to where the special collections were stored. Being a library, we had to be quiet on the way there. Once we reached the special collections section, though, no one was around so we could talk normally.

I right away spotted the page I was interested in. It was stored by itself in a glass case. I bent over it to examine the page carefully.

"What's this mystery about, anyway?" Dave asked, watching us.

As Bess explained it to him, Ned and George crowded around me to look as well. It looked just like I remembered it: a blaze of colorful pictures in the margins and around the capital letters, and fancy, carefully written black lettering.

When Bess finished her explanation, she and Dave joined us in looking over the document. After a few seconds, she wrinkled her nose and asked, "What language is this?"

"Middle English," Ned told her. "You see, English went through several stages before becoming the language we're speaking right now. If you heard all this pronounced out loud, you'd probably be able to recognize quite a few of the words."

"Thank you, Professor Nickerson," Bess teased him.

Ned's an English major at Emerson College, which isn't very far from River Heights. He's great at supplying any information I might need on English or literature, which comes in handy more often than you might think.

"Can you read any of it?" George asked curiously.

"Quite a bit of it," Ned replied. "We're definitely missing quite a few pages, though. None of these even go next to each other."

As I looked over the beautifully decorated page, I wondered how you'd go about hiding a secret message in a page from the Bible. Clearly, the words couldn't have been altered. That meant that the message must either be in their arrangement in the page or worked into the elaborate illustrations. The latter would be the easiest to manage. The message itself could even be completely in pictures, which would make it hard to pick out.

"Is there any chance I can get a copy of this page, Dave?" I asked.

"I'll have to ask, of course, to get the go-ahead," Dave said, "but seeing how it's you, I'm sure the custodians would agree to letting you take a non-flash picture. I'll go check."

As he left the room, I looked over the photos from Craig Miller again. This was the first time I really scrutinized them. I was hoping to find something that showed up on all three pages, something that would really tie them together.

"I need a magnifying glass," I said finally. "The secret message might be really tiny."

Dave came back a few minutes later. "You're good to go, Nancy, although they told me to remind you again not to use flash."

"Thanks, Dave," I said. "It'll be a big help.

"Say, I don't know if this has to do with your case, but there's a guy who was asking at the front desk about this same page," Dave told me. "When Jennie at the front desk told them that we were already back here, he said nevermind."

"Did Jennie know him?" I asked, instantly on the alert.

"I don't think so," Dave replied. "At any rate, she didn't mention his name."

"I'll go ask her," I decided.

The others all stayed behind, looking at the document in question and the other fascinating pieces in the special collections. As I went back to the front desk, I looked around at the other library patrons. Most of them were looking over the titles on shelves or skimming through the pages of books, and many of them were people I knew.

"Can I help you?" Jennie asked as I approached the desk.

"I'm Nancy Drew, Dave's friend who came to see the special collection?" I said.

Jennie nodded. "Yes, of course I remember. Did you find everything you were looking for?"

"Yes," I replied. "Dave told me there was someone else asking to see the manuscripts. I was wondering if you knew him."

"No, I didn't," Jennie told me. "Wait – Nancy Drew. I've seen your picture in the paper before. You're a detective, aren't you? Is this guy some kind of desperate criminal?"

I laughed. "I hope not. It's just a little strange that he changed his mind when he heard my friends and I were already looking at the manuscripts. What did he look like?"

"Oh, kinda tall, blond hair. He was wearing a button-up shirt and jeans. Um." Jennie paused, thinking. Maybe one of the most surprising things I realized when I started detective work is how hard it is to give a description of a person. I've gotten better at it since I've had to practice being observant, but most witnesses haven't spent years honing their skills in that department. It's really hard to make a positive identification based only on a witness's description.

This time, though, I lucked out. As Jennie scrambled to find the right words to describe the man, she looked around at the library. Her eyes widened, and she lowered her voice as she pointed to one of the patrons.

"That's him. Right there."

Casually, I pulled my phone out and opened the selfie camera. I held it up and pointed it in the direction that Jennie had pointed to. When a man was centered on the screen, I tapped the shutter.

"Neat trick," Jennie commented as I checked the photo to make sure I could clearly see the man's face.

"I've used it before," I told her. "Thanks for pointing him out. If he talks to you again or, better yet, gives you his name for some reason, would you mind telling me?"

"I sure will," Jennie agreed. "What kind of mystery are you working on?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't tell anyone, but I've found it's a good policy not to talk too much about my cases." I know it sounded kind of lame, but it was true.

Jennie looked disappointed, but she nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Good luck, though. Maybe you'll tell me about it when you solve it."

After thanking her again, I went outside. There was one more thing I wanted to do before I went back to the others.

One of the toughest things I run into in my detective work is identifying suspects. I don't have any kind of an "in" with any police departments or the FBI or anything. I'm pretty good friends with the chief of police in River Heights, Chief McGinnis, but he's none too willing to bend any rules for me. When I need access to a database of known criminals, my best bet is to go to Frank and Joe Hardy. Their dad is a respected private detective and before that he was an NYPD officer, so he's got a lot of resources. Then Frank and Joe themselves have a few contacts with government organizations, like the mysterious Network. They won't tell me anything about it, but they will use their connections to help me.

I sent the photo to Frank's phone and then called him. He answered after only a couple of rings.

"Hey, Nancy, how's it going?"

"Pretty good," I replied. "I was wondering if you and Joe would do a big favor for me, though."

"Sure thing," Frank said. "What do you need?"

"I sent you a photo a second ago," I explained. "He's a suspect in a new case I'm working on, and I was hoping you could try to identify him."

"We'll do what we can," Frank agreed. "We've got a case of our own that we're working on, and most of our clues got stolen last night."

"Tough break," I said. "I'm glad I don't have to worry about that with my case. My main clue is kept under glass. It's a page from an illuminated manuscript."

"You're kidding," Frank replied. He sounded really surprised by that announcement.

"Yeah," I said. "It supposedly is part of a book that tells where an ancient hidden treasure is."

There was a pause and I wondered if we'd gotten cut off. I knew that Bayport has bad cell reception for the East Coast.

After several seconds, Frank said, "Nancy, this sounds crazy, but I think we're working on the same case."


	5. The Same Mystery

Chapter V: The Same Mystery

Frank

I was woken up by the sound of Joe shouting and the front door slamming. It wasn't the first time that had happened, but it never fails to spur me into action. I jumped out of bed and ran out onto the landing above the stairs in the entryway of the house.

"You stay back," I heard my aunt Gertrude saying. I could just barely make her out in the darkness, standing on one of the bottom steps and brandishing something.

Mom and Dad also came on the run and one of them switched on a light right as Joe was saying, "Aunt Tr – Gertrude, it's me!"

He was standing at the very bottom of the steps with his arms over his head, in case Aunt Gertrude decided to use the golf club she was holding.

"Joe! What are you doing?" Aunt Gertrude asked, lowering the golf club. "You've woken the whole house up."  
"No time to explain. He's getting away," Joe said, turning and running out the front door.

Dad and I followed him. We may not have known exactly what was going on, but it was obvious at least that Joe had interrupted a burglar at work.

Since we still had to run down the stairs and brush past Aunt Gertrude, we were a few seconds behind Joe. By the time we had gotten outside, Joe was standing in the front lawn with his arms crossed.

"Too late," he told us. "He's nowhere in sight, and a car just drove off from across the street. It must have been him."

"What happened, Joe?" Dad asked as we started back to the house.

Joe explained about how he had heard someone downstairs. He had caught the burglar red-handed taking the journal pages, but he got away.

"I might have still had a chance to catch him if Aunt Trudy hadn't come down right then and mistook me for the burglar," he finished.

"He took the whole journal?" I asked, not quite willing to believe our bad luck. Then again, it wasn't the first clue we'd lost this way.

Joe nodded. "He sure did. I guess we'll have to ask Sinclair for another copy. I just hope whoever this guy is, he doesn't start looking for the page and find it before we do."

We'd gotten back inside by this time. Mom and Aunt Gertrude were waiting at the foot of the stairs.

"Did you catch the scoundrel?" Aunt Gertrude asked.

"No, I'm afraid not, Trudy," Dad replied.

"What did he take?" Mom asked.

As Dad explained the whole story, Joe and I went into the living room to see if any other damage had been done. Nothing else was disturbed.

"He must have known exactly what he was after," I commented.

Joe nodded. "I guess there's more to this mystery than I was willing to give it credit for. How could have anyone even known we had the journal?"

This was a good question. We'd been so busy reading the copies the afternoon before that we hadn't even told any of our friends about the case. The only ones who had known were Mom, Dad, Mr. Sinclair, and Callie, although she didn't know what the case was about and she certainly wouldn't have told anyone.

Dad came into the living room. "I called the police. They should be here in a few minutes. Was anything else taken?"

We replied in the negative, and then all of us, including Mom and Aunt Gertrude, went to sit in the kitchen and talk about the incident. Even a few months earlier, Dad, Joe, and I would have dusted the living room for fingerprints and started looking for clues, but things had changed since then. Well, really, only one thing had changed. Detective Lieutenant Olaf.

Joe usually describes him as our arch-nemesis, but that's over-dramatizing things a little. Olaf has never liked us Hardys since the day he joined the Bayport Police Department. Then, a few months ago, he got a promotion to Detective Lieutenant. Joe and I had found a piece of evidence in one of our cases and had thoroughly examined it before turning it over to police. Of course, we told the police what we'd found, but Olaf hit the roof. He threatened if us or Dad ever "tampered" with evidence or a crime scene again, he would personally arrest us for obstructing justice.

He had raised such a fuss that Chief of Police Collig had called Dad and us into his office the next day to talk about it. Technically, so the chief told us, Olaf was in the right, so from hence forward the police would get first crack at any evidence or crime scenes.

Olaf himself was one of the detectives who came. He took his time asking us questions and examining the living room. The officers found a lot of fingerprints in the living room, but most if not all of them probably belonged to one of us Hardys or one of our friends or one of our clients. No one really expected it to be that helpful.

"Can you describe the suspect?" Olaf asked Joe. The question was short and to the point, which is how Olaf always speaks to us, if he has to say anything at all.

Joe nodded. "I got a good look at him when I turned the light on. He was in his early thirties, dark brown hair, brown or hazel eyes. Five foot eleven, about two hundred pounds, most of it muscle. Ruddy complexion, no facial hair, even features except that his nose was a little small. Not like wow – his nose is small, but just a little smaller than you'd expect. He was wearing a dark blue long-sleeve t-shirt, dark blue sweatpants, black or dark blue sneakers, latex gloves. That's why I really don't think you're going to find any of his fingerprints."

Olaf grumbled as he wrote the description down. You would think he'd be happy to have an eyewitness who could give a thorough description of the suspect, but evidently not.

"Is that everything?" he asked.

"Everything I can remember," Joe replied, smirking just a little.

"What about the car you saw?" Olaf questioned.

"I didn't get a good look at that," Joe admitted. "It was a dark-colored sedan, probably black. I didn't have time to see the license number, but I'm pretty sure the plate was from out of state."

Olaf made these final notations on his report. Then, because there was nothing more for him to do, he and his officers left. Dad, Joe, and I searched the living room one more time, but we didn't find anything.

By now, it was after five in the morning. We all went back to bed for a few more hours' sleep, but by eight, Joe and I were both up and ready to get to work. We decided the first thing to do was to call Mr. Sinclair and ask him for more copies of the journal, but he didn't answer our call.

"Now what?" Joe asked.

"We're not completely out of luck," I told him. "Remember I made copies of the pages describing Walter Clancey's home? We could go out to the Mykay place and see if we can find anything that matches up."

"Good idea," Joe agreed. "Let's round up the gang and see if they want to come."

The "gang" as Joe called them is made up of our closest friends. There are Chet and Iola Morton, Tony Prito, Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, Jerry Gilroy, and sometimes Callie. They've all been bitten by the mystery bug to some extent, although none of them have been bitten harder than Chet. You'd never know it from talking to him. He's always asking Joe and me to leave him out of our mysteries and every time he helps us out, he insists it's the last time. It's all an act, though: the only time Chet doesn't help us out is when there's a concrete reason why he can't.

Today was no exception. After pretending to be reluctant for a few minutes, Chet volunteered both himself and his sister Iola to come with us. We weren't so lucky in getting any of the others to come with us. Tony was working at his summer job, Biff and Jerry were gone camping, and Phil was working on some college credit classes that he was taking over the summer.

When I called Callie, she hesitated a little before she said, "No. I'm sorry. I can't come. I would like to meet up with you, Frank, after you get back, though."

"Okay," I agreed. "How about five-thirty at the Crème and Sugar?"

"Sounds good," Callie replied. "Make sure you're there."

Joe and I met Chet and Iola at Tyler's Pizza, which is only a few blocks from the Crème and Sugar. They live a little way out of town on a farm that their dad runs more as a hobby than anything else. Chet, of course, was driving "The Queen." The Queen is an ancient Ford from the 1950's that was left in one of the buildings on the Morton farm for years. When Chet was about fourteen, he started working on it and he eventually got it to run, although not very well. He was proud of it, though, and drove it all over town.

Chet and Iola piled into the backseat of our car and we started out for Mykay Road.

"Isn't Mykay Road where Callie's cousins live?" Iola asked. "You know, the ones raise horses?"

"Say, that's right," Chet agreed, in between bites of potato chips. Chet loves to eat. "Their name's Webster or something."

"Maybe we can stop and ask them for directions," said Joe, who was driving. "I've never been out this way and the GPS on my phone doesn't recognize the Mykay place as a landmark."

Just then my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and saw that it was Nancy Drew calling. Joe and I met Nancy a while back when we were working on a case and our paths crossed. Even though we live half a country apart, we help each other out on mysteries quite a bit.

"Hey, Nancy, how's it going?" I said as I answered.

"Pretty good," Nancy answered. "I was wondering if you and Joe would do a big favor for me, though."

As I said, we help each other out a lot. "Sure thing. What do you need?"

"I sent you a photo a second ago," she told me. "He's a suspect in a new case I'm working on, and I was hoping you could try to identify him."

With Dad's connections in the police force, Joe and I had quite a few resources for making identifications, but right now, what with the whole thing with Olaf putting a strain on our relationship with the police, it might be a little difficult. I didn't want to turn Nancy down, but I also didn't want to promise something I couldn't deliver. Then also, there was our own mystery that we needed to focus on.

"We'll do what we can," I told her. "We've got a case of our own that we're working on, and most of our clues got stolen last night."

"Tough break," Nancy said sympathetically. "I'm glad I don't have to worry about that with my case. My main clue is kept under glass. It's a page from an illuminated manuscript."

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this far. A very special thank you to Cherylann Rivers, max2013, Jilsen, and a guest for their reviews of the previous chapters.


	6. Vanished!

Chapter VI: Vanished!

Joe

Frank, Chet, Iola, and I piled out of the car and stretched. As it turned out, Mykay Road seemed like it was about a bazillion miles long and was probably one of the last dirt roads left in the entire county. Plus, whatever highway district was in charge of keeping it up was obviously shirking their duty.

As I had suggested, we stopped at the Websters' house to ask which place was the Mykay place, but Callie's cousins hadn't been home. So we'd just winged it. We were at the very end of the road before we found a sagging overhead arch with letter across it. Given the circumstances and the big space between the M and the K, it was no leap of imagination to decide that it must have once said "Mykay."

The place fit right in with the road and the archway. There was a dilapidated old house that looked like it would fall over in a stiff breeze. It was probably being propped up by all the out-of-control bushes and ivies that were practically hiding it. There wasn't much grass left in the yard – it was mostly weeds. All around the house, spindly trees and leafless bushes were growing in a sort of eerie forest.

"You think this is the place?" Chet asked.

"I'm sure it's the Mykay place," Frank told him. "Whether or not it's the old Clancey place is going to be a lot harder to prove. We can't count on any descriptions of buildings or trees and other vegetation, since those things are most likely gone. That just leaves us with hills and streams, but even those could have changed in several hundred years."

Frank was right. We didn't have a lot to go on.

"Let's see those journal pages," I said.

Frank handed some to each of us and we began looking around for anything that might match.

"It's so weird that Nancy is working on such a similar case," Iola commented. "Do you think it could be a coincidence?"

"No way," I replied. "That would be even weirder than if Sinclair and Nancy's Miller guy were connected somehow. It's bad enough that one of the pages just happens to be in Bayport and another just happens to be in River Heights."

"If it's not a coincidence, then what is the explanation?" Iola asked.

"Good question," I said. Frank and I were going to have to put some serious thought into this one. If Evan Sinclair and Craig Miller were working together, why wouldn't Sinclair have mentioned Nancy or Miller have mentioned us? And if they weren't working together, why were they both working on the same thing at the same time?

"Hey, I might have something here." Frank broke into my thoughts. "It says here that there's a hot springs on the south side of a hill that is in the northeast corner of what used to be Clancey's farm. Let's look for that."

"We should split up," I suggested. "There're a lot of hills around here. Even split up, we could spend all day trying to find one hot springs."

The others agreed, and each of us fanned out in different directions. For hours, we looked over all the hills in sight, gradually getting farther and farther away from each other. We stopped for lunch at around noon, and then continued our hunt for another couple of hours. By then, I was just about done in, so I flopped down to rest for a minute.

That's when I noticed something that sent a shiver up and down my spine. As I already said, this place was eerie, so it didn't take much to make me shiver. In this case, it was an old headstone covered up with a wild rose bush that had more thorns that leaves.

After my initial shiver, I crawled closer to take a look at it. Sure, Sinclair hadn't said anything about any graves, but you can never tell where you're going to find a clue. Getting a good enough look to tell whether the headstone was a clue or not was no easy business, though. To begin with, the rose bush that was covering it was really thick, which is why I didn't see the stone until I sat down. I pulled my pocketknife out and had to do quite a bit of hacking before I could get to it.

After that, I realized that a lot of the words had been weathered off over the years. It also was tipping forward because the grave was sinking. When I was probably seven or eight, Frank told me once that graves sink because the bodies in them have rotted away. Whether he had been telling the truth or not, the thought wasn't helping the eeriness of the situation.

I read what I could of the inscription on the stone. All that was legible was:

-be- C-cey

1-4 to 17-

-IP

Besides the words, there was also a cross carved into the top of the headstone. I looked at it for another minute or so, and then I noticed something near the bottom of the stone. It was a very small circle with a line pointing out of it to the right and up. I didn't know what to make of it, but I decided I should take a picture of the whole thing anyway.

I was about to take my phone out of my pocket when I thought I heard a faint yell. I thought it might be one of the others saying that they had found something, so I paused to listen. The yell was repeated, but now I realized that it wasn't a "Hey, guys, come look what I found" type of yell – it was a shout for help. I jumped to my feet and started running in the direction that the shout had come from.

I hadn't gone terribly far when I ran into Iola. I mean, I literally almost ran into her.

"Did you hear it, too?" she asked, panting a little.

"Yeah, it sounds like it's coming from over there." I pointed and we started running in that direction.

The shouting was getting louder now, and we could recognize it as Chet's voice. The weird thing was that we knew we were getting close, but neither of us could see him anywhere.

"Heeeeelp!" The drawn-out shout came from practically at my feet.

I looked down and saw a round hole a yard or so away from where I was standing and a pair of hands desperately clinging to the side.

"Over here, Iola," I told my friend.

We looked over the edge and saw Chet dangling over a hole that we deep enough we couldn't see the bottom.

"Well, well, what have you gotten yourself into, Chet?" I teased him.

"Just get me out of here," he snapped.

"Okay, okay," I said.

Iola and I each grabbed one of his hands. A split-second later, Frank arrived on the scene, and he grabbed one of Chet's wrists. The three of us pulled him up with little trouble.

With his feet on terra firma, Chet sprawled on the ground and sighed in relief. "Whew! I didn't think I was going to get out of that one alive."

"What I'm more curious about is how you got into that one," I said. "Didn't you see the hole?"

Chet lay back with his eyes closed. "Nope. One minute, I was walking along minding my own business, the next minute the earth was swallowing me up."

Frank peered down into the hole. "It looks like a well. There was probably a cover on it, but it was so rotted it couldn't support the weight of someone standing on it."

"You don't suppose there are any more wells around, do you?" Iola asked, looking around at the ground suspiciously.

"Probably not in this exact area," Frank assured her. "There must have been a house nearby at some point. I doubt they would have had more than one well."

"Maybe this is Walter Clancey's well," I suggested.

Frank looked at the journal pages. After a few minutes, he said, "I think you're right, Joe. Clancey says that his well was behind his house. If his house was facing west, that hill right there could be the one he says was in front of his house. That would put this well in just the right spot."

"Okay, so we found Clancey's place," Chet said. "How do we find the page that he hid now?"

"That's a little tougher," Frank admitted. "I don't see how we can until we get a new copy of the entire journal from Mr. Sinclair. Our main goal today was to find out whether Clancey lived on the Mykay place or not, and I think we've accomplished that."

"Then I'm ready to head for home," Chet said. "Falling into one well is enough for today."

"Okay," Frank agreed. "Besides, it's getting late and it's a long drive out of here. If we don't go now, I'll be late to meet with Callie."

"We wouldn't want that," I teased Frank. At least, I sounded like I was teasing him, but I was actually fairly serious. Callie had seemed kinda put out with Frank lately, and the last thing Frank needed was for a case to make him late.

As we walked back to the car, I told the others about the headstone I'd found and how the last name on it could be Clancey. I also described the circle with the line.

"If you're right, and the name on the headstone is Clancey, then this has to be Walter's old farm," Frank commented.

Somehow, the drive back to town seemed to take longer than the drive out. By the time I had turned onto the street that had both the Crème and Sugar and Tyler's Pizza, it was five thirty-four.

"Say, Joe, I don't have time to go all the way home," Frank said. "Just drop me off at the Crème and Sugar."

"Why don't I leave the car with you?" I suggested. "If Chet and Iola are willing, they can give me a ride home."

"Sure," Iola agreed. "We wouldn't mind."

"At least, they can give me a ride home if the Queen can hold together for the extra mileage," I added. Chet gave me a mock-reproachful look.

After leaving Frank and the car off in front of the coffee shop, Chet, Iola, and I started walking toward Tyler's Pizza, where the Queen was parked. We hadn't even gotten to the corner when we heard Frank calling to us.

Instinctively, I felt in my pockets for the keys, but, no, I had already handed them over. That wasn't what the problem was. I turned around and went back.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Callie isn't here," Frank told me.

"So she's late." I shrugged.

"But her purse and phone are here," Frank said, "and the barista says that Callie left about ten minutes ago with some guy."

"Okay, that is a little weird," I admitted. "Did the barista know the guy?"

"I didn't take time to ask," Frank replied.

"C'mon," I said, and the two of us went into the café.

We asked the barista about Callie's unknown companion. Chet and Iola came trailing in after us, asking what was going on. I would have liked to know the same thing.

"I'd seen the guy before," the barista told us. "I think he's come in a time or two before this. All I know is that Callie asked me to keep an eye on her stuff and she'd be back in a second."

Frank and I exchanged glances. I could tell we were thinking the same thing: Callie hadn't gone on her own volition.


	7. Where Dragons Roam

Chapter VII: Where Dragons Roam

Nancy

I jerked my head back up as I tried to rouse myself. I hadn't realized I was so tired. It made sense, though. I had been studying every square millimeter of the photos of the manuscript leaves for hours upon hours.

I had long since left the library at the insistence of Bess, who had tired of the task first. With a picture of the library's page in my smartphone, Ned, George, Bess, and I went back to my house to continue our examination in privacy and comfort. At any rate, that's what Ned and I were doing. George had also gotten tired of the job several hours before I began to nod off.

To try to keep from falling asleep, I stood up and stretched. Ned was diligently still trying to find some clue or message in one of the photos, but he had his head in his hands and his hair was messed up from him running his fingers through it. Bess had curled up with Togo in one of the armchairs and they were both asleep. George was sprawled out on the couch, playing with her phone.

"I'm a little brain-fried," I confessed. "What say we get some pizza?"

Bess was instantly wide-awake. "Pizza. Yes. That's the best idea you've had all day, Nance."

"Let's order delivery," Ned suggested. "I want to keep looking these over."

George laughed. "This is one for the history books. Ned wants to keep working on a mystery while Nancy's ready for a break."

The rest of us chuckled. Then Ned said, "The difference is that after Nancy takes a break, she'll be all ready for another eight hours of puzzling over it. If I take a break, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to make myself get back to this."

I grinned. "Well, I can't afford to lose my help, so delivery it is."

"I'll order," George volunteered. "Westway Pizza developed their own app and –"

"Never mind about their app," Bess interrupted. "Just order the pizza. I guess that means that in the meantime we're going to have to keep working on this thing, though?"

"You haven't worked on it since early this afternoon," George reminded her.

"Who's to say I haven't been thinking about it this whole time?" Bess said in a sort of teasing tone.

Even though Bess and George disagree on a lot of things and sound like they're fighting most of the time, they're really just teasing each other. Between being first cousins and living right next door to each other, they're practically like sisters and like sisters, they can insult each other to no end without either really getting offended.

I sat back down at the table and picked up one of the pictures. Even that short of a break was enough that I felt like I was coming back to the problem with a fresh perspective. I picked up my magnifying glass again and began scrutinizing the photo all over again.

By the time the pizzas arrived, though, neither Ned nor I had made any progress. We put the photos aside while we ate – I even convinced Ned to put them up – and we talked about what we knew about the case so far.

"It's some kind of coincidence that Frank and Joe are looking for another clue to the same treasure," Bess commented.

"It couldn't be a coincidence," George said. "That's one coincidence too many to be believable. Miller and their Sinclair must be connected somehow."

"Maybe," I agreed, "or maybe Craig Miller is involved with the Hardys' burglar. Either way would make sense."

"Or maybe Sinclair, Miller, and the burglar are all in on it together," Bess suggested.

George sighed. "Bess, why would've Sinclair given Frank and Joe the journal pages if he was going to just have one of his buddies steal it that night?"

"It could all be part of a very elaborate plot," Bess insisted.

"We can't forget the guy in the library," Ned interjected. "What do you think about him, Nancy?"

Before I could answer, Togo pawed at my knee, asking for a bite of pizza. I slipped him a corner of the crust and then said, "I don't know. He might not have anything to do with the case at all. I'm hoping Frank and Joe will be able to identify him. That could tell us what he's after."

"I could take a shot at identifying him," George said. "I have a new facial recognition software that compares photos to pictures on the Internet. The only problem is that the software just has access to a few social media sites. If he is a crook and he's any good at what he does, he's probably not on any social media sites."

"It's worth a try, though," I agreed.

I sent the photo to George's phone, and she got right to work entering it into her software. When she was done, she explained, "It will take a little while for it to complete the search. If there's a match, though, we'll know it in a few minutes."

We all fell silent for a few minutes, eating the pizza. Then the front door opened and I heard my dad's voice call my name.

"We're in the dining room," I called back.

He came into the living room and said hello to my friends and me. "How is the case going, Nancy? I see you've recruited your sleuthing team."

"The whole thing has gotten pretty strange," I told him. "You see –"

George's phone buzzing interrupted me. "That's the facial recognition program," she explained, as she checked it. A look of disappointment crossed her face. "No luck. There wasn't a match."

"I have a feeling I missed something here," Dad said.

I told him all about what had happened throughout the day, with my friends adding in a few comments here and there. When I'd finished, Dad shook his head.

"Sounds like a real puzzle," he commented, "but I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle. If the Hardys are working on it, too, it should be cleared up in no time."

While Dad went upstairs to put his coat away and change his clothes, I started clearing away the plates on the table. When I took them into the kitchen, I could smell the heavenly scent of one of Hannah's rhubarb pies baking.

"That smells delicious," I told her.

"It'll be ready in a minute," Hannah said. "Are you sure pizza is enough for supper? I could make something more if you want."

I smiled. Hannah always worried about meals in our household more than she needed to. "Judging from the leftovers, I'd say the pizza was plenty, although I don't think anyone's going to turn down a slice of that pie."

When I went back into the dining room, Bess was idly looking at one of the photos that she had picked up. She glanced over it for a few seconds, and then sighed and shook her head as she set it down on the table again. It landed so that one of its upper corners was pointing toward me.

From that angle, something suddenly jumped out at me. Worked into the design of the illustrations so that you'd never notice until you looked at it from just the right angle was a lowercase "R". I gasped when I saw it and everyone looked up at me.

"You okay, Nancy?" Ned asked.

"Bess! You've done it!" I said.

Bess blinked. "Did what? You mean I got greasy fingerprints on the picture? I guess I should have washed my hands –"

"No," I broke in. "You've found how the message is hidden in the manuscript page."

"How?" Ned asked, and he, Bess, and George crowded around me as I pointed out the "R".

Now that we all knew it was there, the letter stood out clearly. Within minutes, we had picked out several other letters hidden in the design. I began jotting them down on a notepad. They seemed to go around all the way around the page, so I wrote them down clockwise, beginning with the letter at the very top of the page.

"What have we got?" George asked after we had gone nearly two minutes without finding any new letters.

"Let's see," I said and began reading the letters out loud. "W, R, an A with a bar over it, W, H, E, M, O, R, S, E, M, R, U."

Bess wrinkled her nose. "That doesn't spell anything. It's barely even pronounceable. Don't tell me that's a Middle English word."

"No," Ned replied. "It could be a code of some kind. Maybe the letters are scrambled."

"Then we'll never get them sorted out," George said. "Even if you can read Middle English, Ned, it's just too hard to work a cipher in a language that you're not completely fluent in."

"Maybe we just need to put spaces in," I suggested. "Would that make it into words, Ned?"

Ned looked at it for a few moments and shook his head. "I don't see anything that looks like a word there."

Hannah came into the room with plates holding slices of pie. "What's all the excitement about?" she asked.

"We found some hidden letters in one of the pictures," Bess explained, "but they don't spell anything."

"Maybe we've got the wrong starting place," I said. "That might make the difference."

We puzzled over it for a few more minutes without success until Dad came into the room as well. We explained what we had found and he looked at the letters I had written down.

"What if the letters go counterclockwise instead?" he suggested.

I wrote the letters out this way: U, R, M, E, S, R, O, M, E, H, W, A, R, W.

"It has the word 'Rome' in it," George commented. "Do you think the message is talking about the city? The treasure could be in Rome!"

"Wait," Ned said. "' _Hwār_ ' is the Middle English word for 'where'."

"Then that's it," George insisted. "Rome is where the treasure is."

I wasn't totally convinced. "What do the rest of the letters mean, then? If you put that last 'W' in front of the others letters you get – _wurmes?_ " I pronounced the word uncertainly. "Does that mean anything, Ned?"

"It sure does," Ned replied. "It means 'snakes' or 'dragons'. And _rome_ means 'roam', as in 'to wander', not the city."

"'Dragons roam where,'" Bess read. "That doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"It does if you start in the right place," I replied. "If the 'H' is the starting place, then the message is 'Where dragons roam.'"


	8. Warning

Chapter VIII: Warning

Nancy

"Whew! I guess it's case closed, yay us, and we can all go home," Bess said.

"Not quite yet," I told her. "We still have to find the messages in the other two pages and figure out what they mean."

Bess sighed. "This is gonna take a while. Nancy, couldn't your next case be in Paris or Hawaii or even someplace not exciting, as long as it's not just sitting around in your dining room looking at photos until our brains are ready to explode?"

I laughed. "I'll see what I can do."

We all started examining the other two pictures – even Dad and Hannah joined in – but we couldn't find any letters like the ones we had seen in the first picture. We were all disappointed and more than a little frustrated.

"Maybe not all of the pages have clues," George suggested. "After all, what better way to hide the location of a treasure than to scatter a few clues in a few pages of a book? It would be harder to decipher then, since no one would know exactly which pages have clues and which don't. Then, when they took the book apart, it would be even worse, because you'd go around rounding up all the pages, but a lot of the effort would be useless."

"That's a good point," Dad agreed. "That just might be the answer."

"Or maybe the clues are hidden differently on each page," Hannah said.

"It could be." I acknowledged both ideas. This was not going to be an easy one to sort out.

As I thought about it for a few more moments, I happened to glance at the clock on the wall. It was nearly nine o'clock – we'd been working on this for almost twelve hours!

"I didn't realize it was so late," I said. "I think we've had enough of this puzzle for one day. I'll drive you three home."

Ned, Bess, and George accepted my offer. I guess Ned had decided that there simply was no way we could solve the entire thing in one sitting.

When I got back after dropping them each off at their homes, Hannah had already gone to bed. Dad was still in the dining room, looking over the photos.

"Are you trying to solve the mystery before I can?" I teased him.

"Wouldn't that be something?" he replied with a grin.

"I think I'd better put the photos in a safe place tonight," I said, becoming more serious. "After what happened to Frank and Joe and their journal clue last night, I can't be too careful with my own clues."  
"Good idea," Dad agreed. "I don't know why anyone would go to the bother of stealing them, but then I don't know why anyone would go to the bother of stealing the Hardys' clues either."

I tucked my photos under my mattress that night. Experience had taught me that it's not possible to search under a mattress without waking the person who is sleeping on it. It turned out that I didn't have to worry about sleeping through any potential burglaries, though – my mind was so full of unanswered questions that I only slept fitfully.

At about one, I decided to get up and get a drink of water. Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I took the photos with me. Togo, who sleeps in my room, heard me get up and followed me downstairs. As I was filling a glass from the dispenser in the fridge, I suddenly stiffened. I had heard a noise outside.

I glanced down at Togo, whose head was cocked in the direction that the sound had come from. It wasn't my imagination, then. There had to be a prowler outside.

Shushing Togo so that he wouldn't bark, I crept to the kitchen door and undid the lock and deadbolt. I very quietly pushed the door open less than a crack so that I could look out. Fortunately, the moon was out and I had a fairly good view of the backyard. No one was in sight.

Then I saw a movement around the corner of the garage, which is separate from the house. Togo must have seen it, too, because before I could stop him, he dashed out the door and headed straight for the garage.

"Togo, come back!" I whispered, not daring to speak aloud and alert the prowler.

It didn't do any good, though. Either Togo didn't hear me or he wasn't listening. A second later, he started barking loudly, and I saw the figure of a man run for the street. There was no use hesitating any longer. If I didn't get a look at the prowler now, I wasn't going to get the chance.

Grabbing the key to my convertible from the rack next to the door, I ran to the garage. The prowler got into a car that was parked in front of our house and started off down the street. A second later, I was in my convertible and headed after him.

River Heights is a pretty sleepy town even during the day. At one o'clock in the morning, there's practically no traffic at all. That was a good thing, since the prowler evidently had no respect for speed limit laws – which isn't surprise, seeing how he also evidently had no respect for trespassing laws either.

He did his best to try to lose me by cutting around corners with no warning and zooming right through a couple of red lights. Fortunately for me, the traffic lights in River Heights are set on sensors at night rather than timers like they are during the day. With no other traffic around, the sensors were only picking up the prowler's car and most of them turned green by the time I came through.

I was just wondering if the sensors were equipped to tell whether passing cars were speeding or not and if I'd have a half dozen tickets coming in the mail when I saw red and blue lights in my rearview mirror. I sighed and pulled over to the side of the street. To my surprise, instead of pulling up behind me, the police car slowed down for a second and the officer shouted to me, "Stay here, Nancy!"

I had to smile. By now, the local police were very familiar with my mystery-solving habits. They knew me, my car, and my license number, and - however they felt about amateur detectives - they knew that I wouldn't be driving like that unless I was chasing a suspect. They also knew that they could trust me to stay put if they told me to, so that meant that as much as I didn't like to, I was staying right where I was.

In about ten minutes, the police car pulled up behind me again. The officer came to the window of my convertible – I had the top up – and looked in. I recognized him as Logan Starr, one of the policemen who were a little more favorable toward me than some of the others.

"I lost the car you were chasing, Nancy," he told me. "I'm sorry. They were driving so crazily, I couldn't keep up. I got the license number, though."

"So did I," I told him. I was disappointed about the prowler getting away, but there was no point in taking it out on Logan. "I guess he was going pretty fast. I probably would have lost him soon, anyway."

"Or gotten in an accident," Logan pointed out. "What did this guy do?"

"He was prowling around outside my house," I explained. "It might have something to do with a mystery I'm working on."

Logan grinning wryly. "I figured that. I guess I should run a DMV check on his license number. You don't mind waiting while I do that?"

"Not at all," I replied.

This was all a bit of an act I had to go through when getting help from the police. The city council – particularly one Councilwoman Toni Scallari – has made things pretty tough for the police to help me out officially. Most of the police officers don't mind giving me a hand, though, as long as I don't ask them to overtly break the rules. This little charade was one we kept things unofficial.

Basically, Logan was inviting me to listen in while he ran the DMV check. One of the things the council didn't want the police doing was running DMV checks of me, but there wasn't much they could say if I just happened to overhear the radio, was there?

I followed Logan over to his patrol car and listened while he radioed in the license number of the prowler's car. A few moments later the dispatcher radioed back that the car was registered to Myron Kelting. Logan turned back to me.

"Now that that's taken care of, there's the matter of you, Miss Drew," he said.

"What about me?" I asked in confusion.

"Do you realize you were going nearly forty in a twenty-five zone?" Logan asked. "I'm going to have to see your license."

I was surprised, but Logan seemed completely serious. "About that. I didn't exactly have time to grab it."

Logan shook his head. "Speeding, driving without a license, and you also ran a red light."

"You're not going to give me a ticket, are you?" I asked.

He didn't reply. A minute later he handed me a warning. "Consider yourself warned, Nancy. There's something else more important I need to warn you about, though. Our favorite councilwoman has been giving the department a hard time about you lately."

"Doesn't she always?" I asked.

Logan gave a sort of dry chuckle. "An extra hard time. She's especially unimpressed that you've been getting away with just warnings when you're, shall we say, too preoccupied to pay attention to traffic laws. I'm game to keep cutting you slack, and so's the chief. We're on the same side, after all, and I'm not always so sure Councilwoman Scallari is. But no everyone on the department agrees. Some of them care more about keeping on the good side of politicians than they do about getting the job done. What I'm saying is, be a little more careful in the future, Nancy. You won't get off so easily if the wrong cop pulls you over next time."  
"Thanks for the tip, Logan," I told him. "I appreciate it, and I appreciate getting a warning instead of a ticket. It's not going to get you into any trouble, is it?"

"Don't worry about it," Logan assured me. "I've got to get back on patrol. I'll see you later."

When I got back home, I found that Dad and Hannah had been woken up by the excitement and were frantically wondering what had happened. I explained everything, and then we went back to bed.

The next morning, I looked to see if the prowler had left any clues behind, but I didn't find anything. Then I called Craig Miller to tell him what I had found with the manuscript so far.

"Where dragons roam," he repeated after I had told him. "That doesn't mean anything to me. You don't happen to have any great ideas off the top of your head, do you, Miss Drew?"

"I'm afraid not," I admitted. "I did find out something else that might have a bearing on the case. Some friends of mine are trying to find another page of the same manuscript. A guy by the name of Sinclair asked them to."

There was a momentary pause, and then Mr. Miller asked, "Sinclair? As in Evan Sinclair? If Evan Sinclair is involved in this, you'd better drop the case. Tell your friends to drop the case, too. Just forget all about it."

Without a word of explanation, Mr. Miller hung up the phone. What was that about? I tried to call him back on the chance that we had only been cut off, but he didn't answer.

After thinking the situation over for a few minutes, I decided to call Frank and Joe and tell them about this strange twist. I tried Frank's phone first, but he didn't answer. Then I tried Joe's phone.

After I heard it ring four times on my end of the line, Joe's sleepy voice finally came over the line. "Hello?"

"Hi, Joe," I replied. "Did I wake you up? Isn't it almost ten there?"

"Wake me up?" Joe repeated. "How coulda you? Haven't been asleep in twenty-four hours, and even then it wasn't for very long." I heard him yawn.

"Your case not going well, huh?" I guessed.

"Oh, Nancy, you don't know the half of it," Joe said. "We've got big trouble."

"Anything I can do to help?" I offered.

"I don't –" Joe started to say, but then he stopped. "You wouldn't happen to be any good at forging illuminated manuscripts, would you?"


	9. Ransom

Chapter IX: Ransom

Frank

Don't panic. I tried to stay calm even though my first reaction was to panic. It wasn't like Callie to leave like that, not when she knew I was coming to meet her. Something must have happened to her. It was the only explanation.

I could tell from the way Joe was looking at me that he was thinking the exact same thing. He turned away from me to look at the barista again.

"Can you describe the man Callie left with?" he asked.

The girl shrugged. "He was just an old guy. I didn't really take a good look at him."

"You said you'd seen him before," Joe insisted. "If you recognized him, you must be able to remember something about him."

Taking a deep breath, the girl looked around the room before she looked at Joe again. "He was old. Really old."

"Sinclair," Joe guessed.

"Who?" the girl asked.

"Did he have a cane?" Joe said.

The girl flushed red and looked down at the counter. "I don't know. I – Yes. Yes, he had a cane. But that's all I can tell you. Really."

"Then it can't be Sinclair," Joe mused.

"What's your name?" I asked the barista.

She hesitated. "Tanya. Why?"

"It's important," I assured her. "Can you tell me your last name, too?"

"What's going on?" Iola broke in. "Has something happened to Callie?"

She was wide-eyed and a little pale. I couldn't blame her. She and Callie have been best friends since before they could remember probably. They had certainly been best friends longer than I had known either of them, and I had met them in kindergarten.

"Just stay calm," Joe told her, although he also cast a glance at me while he said it. "I'm sure Callie's fine. We need to know for certain, though, Tanya. It would be a really big help if you would tell us your full name so that we can contact you if we have any more questions."

Tanya kept her eyes pointed downward and absentmindedly ran her finger along the grain of the wooden countertop. "Do you really think she might be in some kind of trouble? I – Well, I –" She hesitated like she was trying to make up her mind. Finally, she said, "Marth. My last name's Marth."

Joe grabbed a piece of paper on the counter and a pen and jotted down his phone number. He handed it to Tanya.

"If you remember anything, anything at all about the man or what Callie said or did, please call me," he said.

"I will," Tanya promised. "I – I've got to get back to work."

She turned away and practically ran into the back of the coffee shop. The four of us looked at each other, trying to decide what to do.

"Do you think Callie's been kidnapped?" Chet asked with more concern than tact.

I was at a loss for what to say. Nothing was making sense right now. Callie wouldn't have stood me up, would have she? No, she couldn't have. She wouldn't have left her purse and phone behind if she was leaving the shop for good. Maybe she hadn't left for good. But why did she leave at all? If – if she was kidnapped, why did she just leave with the kidnapper? Why would have anyone kidnapped her anyway? I had to go sit down.

"Look, she's only been missing for maybe fifteen minutes," I heard Joe say when I had tuned back in enough to listen. "There's no reason to worry."

"But she said she'd be back in a few minutes," Iola replied.

"Doesn't mean anything," Joe told her. I could tell that he was forcing his optimism. "You know Callie. A minute for her is like an hour for anyone else."

"Why would have she left her stuff?" Chet asked.

Even I could tell that he and his sister weren't buying Joe's attempts to convince them that Callie was fine. I vaguely wondered why he was even trying, but right now my thoughts were concentrated on trying to sort this out.

I missed Joe's answer to Chet's question, and the next thing that caught my attention was Joe asking, "Did she tell you anything about her plans for today or this evening, Iola?"

"No," Iola replied. "She said yesterday that she didn't have any plans for today. That's why I was surprised when she didn't come with us to the Mykay place."

"C'mon," Joe said. "It's not going to do any good standing around here. Let's go someplace we can talk privately."

He gathered up Callie's things and started toward the door. Chet and Iola followed, but I was too preoccupied to stand up. Joe came back and tugged my sleeve with his free hand.

"Come on, Frank. There's something we need to talk about."

I roused myself and followed him outside. We all got into our car, with Joe and me in the front and Chet and Iola in the back. Joe turned around so that he was kneeling on the seat, facing the back as well as he could.

"What's with the snow job, Joe?" Chet asked. "Why were you trying to convince us nothing happened to Callie?"

"Not you – that waitress," Joe replied. "I wanted her to think we weren't convinced so she'd go back to her boss and tell him he's going to have to contact us to convince us."

"Huh?" Iola wrinkled her eyebrow. "What are you talking about, Joe?"

"Tanya was lying. That much was obvious," Joe told her. "I doubt there was any old man or that Callie left willingly. There're only two possibilities: either Tanya is actually working with the kidnappers or they paid her off to lie."

Iola swallowed. "You're sure she was kidnapped, then?"

Joe turned around so that he was sitting normally in his seat. Instead of replying to Iola's question, he asked, "What's the plan, Frank? Where do we look?"

I hadn't gotten as far as making a plan yet. I looked out through the windshield while I scrambled to think of one.

"I guess the first place to look would be her house. Let's go see if she's there."

"Hold on. We can just call," Joe said. "It'd save us time and some possibly unnecessary worry for Callie's parents."

"Right," I agreed. "I've got the number in my phone."

While I placed the call, Iola asked, "Joe, why do you want the kidnappers to contact you?"

"Because if they contact us, we can find them," Joe told her.

"What if they send a letter or use some sort of voice disguiser to call?" Iola asked.

"We can find them," Joe insisted. "There's no way of contacting a person that can't be traced somehow."

Callie's mom answered the phone. Instead of saying anything about what happened, I simply asked to talk to Callie.

"She's not here," her mom said. "I thought she was on a date with you."

My heart sank. I hadn't had much hope that Callie would have gone home, but I had had some.

"No," I replied. "We were supposed to meet at the Crème and Sugar, but she's not here." I paused, trying to decide whether I should tell her the whole story. I decided I should. She was Callie's mother, after all.

When I had finished, she didn't say anything at first. "Mrs. Shaw?" I asked. "Are you still there?"

"Yes. Yes. What are we going to do?" Callie's mom said.

I didn't know. I was at a loss. I don't even remember what I said to Mrs. Shaw or how I ended the conversation. I was too lost in thought, wondering what had happened to Callie and where she was.

"You've got to think of something, guys," Chet was saying when I zoned back in. "We've got to find Callie on the double."

"Yeah, we know," Joe told him. "We've got to think. Okay. There might be something in Callie's phone that would give us a clue."

He took the phone out, but it was only a moment before he dropped it again in frustration. "Password protected," he said. "Do you think you could hack it, Frank?"

"I'm not a hacker, Joe, no matter what you think," I said sharply. I didn't mean to snap and I felt bad a moment later.

"Maybe Phil could," Chet suggested.

"Great idea," Joe replied. "Let's go, Frank."

I started the car and began driving toward Phil Cohen's house. After we'd gone about three blocks, my phone started ringing. The number wasn't familiar, but it was from Bayport.

"It could be Callie," I said hopefully. "Maybe she borrowed someone else's phone."

I grabbed the phone. My anxious hello wasn't answered by Callie's voice. Instead, an eerie voice that was clearly being generated by voice disguising technology replied.

"Listen up. If you want to see Callie again, bring the manuscript page to three eleven Waterfront Street within a week. Come alone. I'll know if you don't."

The person on the other end of the line hung up.

"Kidnapper?" Joe asked. He must have guessed from my expression.

"Yeah," I replied. "He wants a ransom – the page from the manuscript. He gave us a week to get it."

"Oh boy," Joe half-sighed. "We're going to have to step on it. Give me your phone, Frank. I want to take down that number."

"How are we possibly going to find that old manuscript?" Iola asked. "We looked all afternoon and we didn't find a single clue."

"Maybe we did," Joe spoke up. "Remember that headstone I found? That circle on it might be some sort of directions or something. We should take another look at it."

By now, we had reached Phil's house. He was surprised to see us looking so worried, but he seemed even more surprised when we told him the reason for our concern.

"I could try getting into her phone," he said when Joe asked him about it. "Do you think it's right, though? I mean, it's kind of invading her privacy."

"It's fine," I told him. "We need whatever clues we can get."

"It might take a little while," Phil said.

"That's okay," Joe replied. "We've got some other leads to follow. Call us when you get in."

Joe led us all back to the car, leaving Callie's phone in Phil's keeping.

"What leads are you talking about?" Iola asked.

"The phone number and the headstone," Joe replied.

"But the headstone's way back at that Mykay place," Chet protested.

"Then we'll drive there tonight if we have to," Joe told him. "We'll work on the phone number first."

"How?" Chet asked.

Joe looked around the seat at him with a wry smile. "I guess the only way we can is to tell the police. Kidnapping is the sort of thing we should report to them anyway."

"And Phil's got Callie's phone," I groaned. "Olaf's gonna kill us."

Joe nodded. "But we don't have any choice."


	10. Midnight Search

Chapter X: Midnight Search

Joe

Frank was right about one thing: Olaf did want to kill us. But what else can you expect of an arch-nemesis? He's always furious with us and he's always on duty when we report something.

Personally, I don't think it's a coincidence. I think that he's Bayport's Moriarty and he's got it in for Frank and me. Maybe he's behind all of our cases and that's how he's always on duty whenever we have to talk to the police. Frank doesn't think so, though.

Anyway. Between Frank, the Mortons, and me, we reported all the details of everything that happened so far. We figured that the kidnapper clearly must be involved in the manuscript treasure hunt, so we gave Olaf the full scoop on that, too. It wasn't until we told him that Phil Cohen had Callie's phone – which might very well be an important clue – that Olaf really had murder in his eyes.

"Look, Lieutenant Olaf, this is serious," Frank was saying to him. "This isn't just some burglary or car theft. It's a kidnapping."  
"That's exactly why you two need to stay out of it," Olaf retorted.

"We're in it whether you like it or not," I spoke up. "The kidnapper wants Frank to deliver the ransom himself."

"The ransom," Olaf sneered. "You don't have the ransom. Besides, if you're such fantastic detectives, you ought to know that paying the ransom should only be a last resort. Once you give the kidnappers what they want, what's to stop them from killing Callie?"

Naturally, that possibility had occurred to all of us before now. None of us had said anything about it, because somehow it seems like an unspoken fear can't really happen. Having Olaf coarsely throw it out made it sound sickeningly possible.

None of us replied, which apparently made Olaf think that he had scored a point. He gave an infuriating grin and then said, "Remember what I told you about next time I caught you tampering with evidence?"

"So what?" I burst out. "This is no time for a power struggle between us. All we're interested in is finding Callie, and we don't have time for you to try to prove you're the world's best detective or whatever. We need to work together on this one, and if we don't and something happens to Callie, it's going to be because of you."

It wasn't the most insightful or moving speech, but it was on the spur of the moment so I didn't have a chance to think of something better. Olaf tightened his jaw and stood up to face me.

"Take your own advice, kid. If you wanna prove yourself as a detective, do it in your own time. I'm not turning crimes over to a pack of inexperienced teenagers to solve."

That was it. I've had a lot of people cast my age up to me and act like I don't know what I'm doing just because I'm a teenager, and it never failed. If you want to make me furious, that's the fastest way to do it.

The others knew what was coming. I guess it would be pretty bad if my brother and my best friends didn't know what set me off.

"Hey, I honestly don't care which of you is more qualified," Iola broke into the argument. "Right now, you're both wasting time. We've got to find Callie as fast as possible."

"That's what I'm trying to do, young lady, if these amateurs would get out of the way," Olaf replied through gritted teeth.

"Joe, don't say another word," Frank warned me, noticing that I was about to retort. After he seemed satisfied that I wouldn't, he turned to Olaf. "Let's let the chief settle this. Joe and I will promise to do whatever he says."

I wasn't so sure that was a promise I was willing to make, but I didn't say anything. Frank can keep a level head when I can't, and I knew, even in the midst of fury, that it would be for the best to let him handle it from here. It was all I could do to keep from saying anything – I'd never be able to talk calmly to Olaf.

"The chief can't personally investigate every crime," Olaf said.

I gritted my teeth and counted to ten. Before I'd finished, Frank replied, "Just get him. It's the fastest way to settle us."

Grumbling, Olaf asked another officer to go ask the chief to come. The silence was stony until Chief Collig himself arrived. He didn't seem terribly surprised or even annoyed – more tired.

"What's going on here?" he asked.

Frank retold the whole story. He has this infuriating habit of – no matter what's happened – calming right down the minute I start getting wound up. I have to admit, though, it's probably a good thing. Otherwise, I'd probably get us into a lot more trouble than I already do.

When Frank had finished, Collig's face was grim. He looked from Olaf to Frank to me with a very serious expression.

"This is too serious for your usual arguments," he said, directing it at all three of us. Frank looked down at his shoes, and Olaf flinched a little. "Frank and Joe, leave the main investigation to the police. If you have any ideas, let us know. We'll keep you updated, too. I think it would be a good idea to pay the ransom – if we can. The two of you can work on that. And, Olaf, if they need your cooperation for anything, you're going to give it."

This closed discussion on the matter. None of us were too happy about the arrangement, but there wasn't anything we could do now. Olaf couldn't disobey a direct order from Collig – not if he wanted to keep his job – and Frank had given his word, so I knew he was going to keep it and he was going to make sure I kept it too.

"What now?" Iola asked, her voice wavering a little. She doesn't cry easily, so I knew for her to be this close, she must be really worried and stressed out.

"You heard the chief," Frank said. "We've got to find that page. Let's go take a look at Joe's headstone."

Ordinarily, I would have cracked a joke at that wording, but I wasn't in the mood now.

"It's after eight," Chet reminded Frank. "It'll be practically the middle of the night by the time we get out there."

"You can stay if you want," Frank told him. "I'm going."

"No, we'll go, too," Iola said. "I wouldn't be able to sleep if we went home anyway."

Frank called our parents and Chet called his to tell them what was happening and that we wouldn't be home until late – or early, depending on how you look at it. Then we headed out again on our second trip to the Mykay place.

"I can't believe that Olaf," I grumbled as we left city limits.

"Joe, let it go," Frank told me. "It's not going to do any good."

It was past dark by the time we reached the Mykay place again. We took flashlights and I tried to make my way back to the headstone. Chet was walking extra gingerly, and I suspected that he was being careful to avoid any more wells.

It took me awhile before I finally located the headstone. Frank shone his light on it and studied the circle and line.

"It's strange, all right," he said. "You're right that the last name is probably Clancey, Joe, and the second date is in the seventeen hundreds. It's just the right time for this to be a relative of Walter Clancey."

"But even if that is a message of some sort, we don't know for sure that it has anything to do with the manuscript," Iola pointed out.

I shook my head. "I don't think there's a lot of doubt. As long as it is some kind of message, how many secrets could have one family had? At least, how many of the type that they would leave clues for people to eventually find the secrets out?"

"Okay, let's think," Frank said. "What could this symbol possibly be? It could be a religious symbol of some kind, but I don't think that's likely. Most of the colonists were Christians, and I've never seen this symbol in connection with Christianity anywhere."

"It kinda looks like a clock," Chet commented. "Maybe it's indicating a time."

"It only has one hand," I reminded him. "Besides, what time could possibly be so important that they would have put it on somebody's headstone?"

"Maybe it's the time the person died," Chet suggested.

"Wait!" Iola said. "You know what it really looks like? A compass."

Frank looked at it for a few seconds longer before he said, "You're right, Iola. It must be indicating northeast. The page could be hidden northeast of here."

"It doesn't say anything about how far," I pointed out. "How will we know where to dig at?"

"That's assuming the page is buried," Frank said.

"How else are they going to hide it?" I asked.

Frank gave a hopeless shrug. "I don't know. I guess the only thing to do is start walking northeast and see if we find anything."

So we started walking. And walking. And walking. We went back and forth several times, retracing our steps in case we had missed something or gotten off-course. This went on for hours without us finding a thing.

The trail took us past the area with the well, which Chet gave a generous distance to. It made me think, though. Could the page have somehow been buried in the well?

When I asked Frank about it, he looked thoughtful. "It's possible. There's only one way to find out. One of us is going to have to climb down there."

"We'll need the rope from the trunk," I said. "I'll go get it."

We always keep a coil of rope among other useful things in the trunk of our car. I ran there and back, taking only a few minutes to retrieve the rope.

"I'll go," Frank volunteered.

"It was my idea," I reminded him.

"Rock, paper, scissors," Frank said.

We played the game, and Frank won. He tied the rope around his waste, and I tied the other end to one of the many nearby trees. Then Chet and I held onto the rope so that we could lower Frank down slowly. Frank braced his feet against the side and walked himself down, using his phone for a flashlight.

Well after Frank was out of sight and before Chet and I had finished lowering him, we heard him give a cry of alarm.

Iola looked down and called, "Frank? Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Frank called back up. "I just slipped. These walls are slick. I dropped my phone, though."

"How far is it to the bottom?" I asked.

"Quite a ways," Frank shouted back up. "And there's water at the bottom."

"We'd better pull him back up," Chet said. "We should wait until morning to look down there and have headlamps."

Frank and I were reluctant, but we agreed. We kept the search above ground up all night, but didn't find any more clues. By the time we got back to town, it was morning.

We dropped Chet and Iola off at the Queen, and then went back home ourselves. Dad, Mom, and Aunt Trudy were eager to hear all about it, but they told us we should go to bed – a sentiment we weren't about to argue with.

Even so, I couldn't sleep. My mind was way too focused on trying to think who could have kidnapped Callie and why and where they had her and whether she was all right or not. After what must have been hours, I finally started to fall asleep when my phone rang. I tried to ignore it at first, but then I picked it up.

"Hello?" I mumbled into it.

"Hi, Joe," I heard Nancy Drew's voice come over the line. "Did I wake you up? Isn't it almost ten there?"

"Wake me up?" I asked. "How coulda you? Haven't been asleep in twenty-four hours, and even then it wasn't for very long." I yawned.

"Your case not going well, huh?" she said, sounding sympathetic..

I sighed. "Nancy, you don't know the half of it. We've got big trouble."

"Anything I can do to help?" Nancy asked.

I started to tell her that I didn't think there was, but then a sudden plan popped into my head. "You wouldn't happen to be any good at forging illuminated manuscripts, would you?"

 _A/N: Thank you for reading so far! A special thank you to Cherylann Rivers, max2013, Jilsen, ulstergirl, and guest reviewers for your reviews!_


	11. Parchment and Ink

Chapter XI: Parchment and Ink

Nancy

"Huh?" I said. I was too surprised by Joe's question to say anything more intelligent than that. After I shook my head to clear my surprise, I was able to joke, "Do I look like a forger?"

"Well, yeah," Joe replied. "You're the one who forged an ancient stone tablet. That's one up on me."

He had a point. "What do you need a forgery for? You're not going to try to pull one over on Sinclair, are you?"

"Not unless he's a kidnapper," Joe replied.

"What's going on over there?" I asked.

Joe began pouring out the entire story of everything that had happened with their mystery since I had talked to them last. He finished by saying, "So you see, Nance, if we can't find that manuscript, maybe we can trick the kidnappers with a forgery."

"It might work," I agreed. "I don't know that I could do it, though. I don't even know where I'd get the materials. Don't you have some contact who could do it? What about the Network?"

"No way," Joe said quickly. "The Network is bad news. You can paint, Nancy, and you know all about making things look aged and all that. If anyone we know can do it, you can."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don't know." I was still hesitant. "If I mess up, that will only make things worse."

"I know it's a long shot," Joe admitted. "But it's no more of a long shot than thinking that Frank and I can actually find the real page. We maybe won't even have to use it. Maybe the police will come up with something before we have to pay the ransom. I doubt it with Olaf in there, but it's possible. Or maybe Frank and I will be really lucky. No matter what, though, we need a backup plan."

"When you put it that way, I can't very well refuse," I said. "I'll see what I can do. We have a week, you say?"

"That's right," Joe replied. "Do you think you can get it in a week?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'd be surprised, but I'll try. I'll let you know how it goes." I was about to hang up when I remembered my original reason for called. "Say, Joe, there was something I needed to tell you. I was talking to Craig Miller and he said that if Evan Sinclair is mixed up in this thing, we should all just forget it."

"Hmm. That's strange," Joe said. "We've tried to call Sinclair a couple of times, but he won't pick up. Miller didn't say what he has on him?"

"No," I told him. "He hung up as soon as he said that and he won't answer his phone now."

After I ended the call, I allowed myself a minute or two to think. Honestly, I had no idea how to go about forging an illuminated manuscript. The only thing to do was to go to my personal expert on the topic, Ned.

I wanted to talk to him in person, so I drove to his house. He must have seen me drive up, because he came out to meet me.

"Hi, Nancy," he said. "I didn't think I'd be saying this, but I'm all ready to get back to work on those manuscripts."

"We're going to have to put that one on hold for awhile," I told him. I explained to him everything Joe had said to me.

Ned whistled when I was done. "That's serious. But, Nancy, you can't forge an illuminated manuscript, or a page of one. Not in a week. Not without any practice."

"I know," I admitted. "I promised, though, so I've got to try. I was hoping you could help me."

"I'll do my best," he agreed.

We began outlining what we would need. The first and most obvious thing was a piece of parchment. We also needed feather pens and inkwells. None of those would be too hard to find. The really tough things would be the gold leaf and the right inks.

"Do we have to use the same kind of inks the monks would have used?" I asked.

"If we want it to stand up to any kind of scrutiny, we do," Ned told me. "Then again, if they look at it hard enough to see that the ink is wrong, they'll have already noticed that the aging is fake."

I nodded. "We don't have the equipment for any kind of really sophisticated aging process that would fool them for long, so let's not worry about authentic ink. We'll just have to hope that we won't have to use our forgery, or that if we do, the kidnappers won't think of it to examine it before they let Callie go."

With this decision reached, we got into my car and went to a paper supply store. We asked them where we might get parchment and our other supplies.

The clerk gave us a funny look, but then he said, "We carry all of those things sometimes. They're not huge sellers, though, so any stock we have has been here awhile. Let me check to make sure we have them."

I crossed my fingers as he went into the backroom. He was gone a long time, and I was starting to get discouraged.

"Cheer up, Nancy," Ned told me. "If they don't have them here, we can find the things somewhere else. If worse comes to worse, we can order them online with overnight shipping."

We were in luck, though – a little luck at least. The clerk came out carrying some pieces of parchment and two bottles of ink, one black and one blue.

"We don't have any other colors of ink," he told us. "Will these do?"

"It's a start," I said.

We bought three sheets of vellum parchment – in case I made a mistake - and the two bottles of ink. We decided that Ned would continue the search for other colors of ink and the gold leaf while I got started on the wording at my home.

Before Ned left on his errand, he helped me make some feather pens out of some large feathers that I had in my room. I know, not everybody happens to have feathers around, but I've had to get some interesting things for my cases and I usually keep them. After all, I never know when one might come in handy again.

Then I began practicing on a sheet of computer paper. Fortunately, calligraphy is something that I'm fairly good at, so I at least knew what I was doing. I just needed to get the pen to cooperate.

Ned was about to leave when I realized that I had made a serious oversight and I called him back.

"I don't have the faintest idea what to write," I said.

"Oh, right." Ned bit his lip. "We'll need to find a translation of the Gospel of John in Middle English. That might be a little trickier than a simple search engine." A strange look crossed his face.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"I just thought of something," he said. "The reason why it will be tricky is because there aren't very many copies of the Gospel of John in Middle English. There will be some that weren't from illuminated manuscripts, no doubt, but they usually only illuminated a book if it was for a special purpose, like an altar Bible or something. But those would have been written in Latin."

"So why is our particular manuscript in Middle English," I finished his thought. "That is weird. Do you think it could mean it's a fake?"

"No, not necessarily," Ned replied. "It just means that it's a very unusual book."

I smiled. "We already knew that. Why don't you start looking for a translation? We won't need the other inks until the words are all written, and that won't be for a little while."

I kept practicing while Ned made an Internet search. By the time he found a translation that satisfied him, I was getting the hang of the feather pen. After practicing awhile longer and then giving my hand a rest, I decided to make the plunge and start actually writing on the parchment.

Ned was lucky and found ink in a number of different colors and shades. It was enough that we decided we could manage with those colors.

By the time he got back with his prize, I was working on my second sheet of parchment – I had already goofed on the first one. I only had one sentence written, and I was feeling discouraged.

"It looks great." Ned tried to encourage me. It was nice of him, but it didn't really help.

I worked on that parchment all day. By evening, I had written the whole thing with a few minor mistakes. Ned and I agreed, though, that there was no point in worrying about them – without a lot more practice, I probably wouldn't be able to do better than that.

"Whew," I sighed. "This is way slower than I thought it would be. Doing the illustrations is going to be murder."

Ned nodded. "I'm afraid it might be."

"I'll work on that tomorrow," I said. "My hand's so tired, I'd probably mess it up if I tried to do it tonight. I'll call Frank and Joe. Maybe all this toil is going to be unnecessary, after all."

I remembered that Joe had told me that Frank's phone was currently underwater at the bottom of a well, so called Joe's number. He answered it right away.

"How's the forgerizing going?" I heard Frank's voice in the background, and then Joe said, "I know it's not a word, Frank. I don't remember the last time I slept, though, so you can cut me some slack."

"The – er – forgerizing is going slow," I told him. "Have you made any progress today?"

"Yeah," Joe said. Judging from his tone, it didn't sound like the progress was good.

"Well?" I asked. "What did you learn?"

"That unless Olaf turns out to be a better detective than I give him credit for, we are definitely going to need that forgery, Nancy," he replied.

"Don't give up on finding the page yet," I told him. "Especially since this forgery is not going to fool anybody who bothers to look at the manuscript halfway closely."

"We're not giving up," Joe said. "It's just that we learned approximately where the page is, and we're not going to be able to get to it in a week."


	12. The Well

Chapter XII: The Well

Frank

I looked at the alarm clock next to my bed. It was ten-thirty. Clearly, I wasn't going to be getting any sleep today. I sighed, wondering where Callie was and kicking myself for agreeing to do whatever Chief Collig said. I had thought he'd give us the go-ahead to look for Callie ourselves. That Olaf… Maybe Joe's Moriarty theory wasn't so out there after all. Ugh. It was pretty bad if I was starting to agree with that idea.

"Frank!" Joe shouted, bursting into my room without knocking.

I jumped. "What is it?" I asked, making no attempt to hide my annoyance. Ordinarily, Joe and I make it a rule to be pretty patient with each other. After over twenty-four hours without sleep, Joe's performance at the police station, and most of all learning that Callie had been kidnapped, I was in no mood to be patient.

Either Joe didn't notice or he didn't let on that he did. "I've got a fantastic idea," he said, and then he told me his whole plan for having Nancy forge a fake manuscript page.

I groaned when I heard it. "That's a terrible idea, Joe. Nancy's great, but she's no miracle-worker. She won't be able to make a convincing forgery."

"Yeah, but it's something to go on," Joe insisted. "Maybe the crooks won't look at it too hard before they release Callie. At any rate, it's better than no Plan C at all."

"Maybe," I said, "but let's make sure we don't have to use it. Let's head back out and look in that well."

As we were leaving the house, Mom and Aunt Gertrude saw us.

"Where are you going now?" Aunt Gertrude asked, looking at us suspiciously. "You can't have gotten more than a couple hours of sleep."

"Well, um," I started to say, but then I decided it would be best not to respond directly to that comment. "We're going back out to the Mykay place to keep looking. There's nothing else the police will let us do, and we can't stand sitting around without doing anything."

"You searched that place thoroughly yesterday," Aunt Gertrude replied. "If you ask me, that Evan Sinclair doesn't know what he was talking about."

Joe and I weren't about to budge on this one. Mom must have seen, because she said, "You can at least eat some breakfast before you go. You know you didn't have supper last night."

I had completely forgotten about eating until that moment, but when Mom said that, I realized I was starving.

"Okay," Joe said, evidently realizing the same thing. "We can go along with that."

We didn't take time to eat a hot breakfast, so we just had cold cereal and toast. Then we packed up our rock climbing gear, a couple of headlamps, a pick, and a shovel.

"We should take one of the other guys along," Joe said.

I nodded. "Chet and Iola are probably sacked out right now. Let's see if Biff's back from his camping trip."

We stopped by Biff Hooper's house and found that he was back. He was astonished when we told him about Callie.

"I'll do anything you need to help," he volunteered immediately.

When we got to the Mykay place, the three of us went straight to the well.

"There's only room for one of us to go down," I said, peering down into the darkness. "I'll go. You two can lower me."

There was a little grumbling about this from Joe, who still wanted to explore the bottom of the well, but he agreed in the end. He and Biff tied one end of the rope to the same tree that we had used the night before and, when I was ready, began lowering me down. I wore a headlamp so that there would be no chance of dropping my light this time.

I had gone down about thirty feet when I came to the water. I shouted to Joe and Biff to slow down lowering me. Even with all the things I've been through, getting lowered inch by inch into cold water is one of my least favorites. Fortunately, the water didn't even come up quite to my waist.

"Okay, I'm at the bottom!" I called up.

Joe and Biff stopped lowering and a moment later I saw them peering down at me.

"Is there anything down there?" Joe asked.

"I'm looking," I replied.

I grimaced as I reached down into the water to feel around the bottom. After a few seconds, my fingers touched something lying on the bottom and I picked it up. It was my smartphone, completely ruined by the water.

I felt around some more, but there didn't seem to be anything else in the water besides some rotted pieces of wood that had probably been part of the cover that Chet had broken through the day before. I began investigating the walls. They were lined with brick and several of the bricks had come loose over the years.

The thought occurred to me that maybe not all of these bricks had come loose; maybe they had been loose to begin with. I began taking them out one by one and looking behind them. I found a lot of slime, salamanders, and spiders before I found anything interesting.

I found one brick that was about shoulder-high. It wiggled a little, but I couldn't pull it out. Just to see what happened, I tried pressing it in. I heard a click and the whole section of wall above me shook a little. Taking a breath, I pushed inward and with a loud creaking, the wall moved. I could see a cavern beyond in the dim light of my headlamp.

"Joe! Biff! I found a secret passage!" I called up to them.

"Figures!" Joe shouted back. "What's inside?"

"I'll find out," I replied.

I unfastened myself from the rock climbing harness and scrambled up into the doorway. My headlamp showed a small, natural cavern that had no other exit. I guessed that whoever dug the well had probably hit the cavern by accident.

However they had found it, they didn't just let it sit. There were several decrepit trunks along the walls, most of them rotting apart from the dampness. My heart skipped a beat when I saw them. Our search just might be at an end.

I shouted the news up to Joe and Biff, and then set to work examining the trunks. I was half expecting them to be overflowing with gold and jewels, but that wasn't the case. Instead, they held Revolution-era muskets and ammunition. The Clanceys must have been hiding weapons for the Americans during the Revolution, I reasoned.

I carefully emptied out the trunks to see if there was any sign of the illuminated manuscript or any clue to it. It made me a little nervous to think about how I was probably the first person in over two hundred years to have disturbed those muskets. Most likely, they were irreparably damaged from being hidden in a damp, underground hole for so long, and I could hardly damage them further, but I was cautious in moving them anyway.

I found a metal box at the bottom of one of the trunks. It had a padlock on it, but it was so rusted that I was able to break it off easily. Inside, more preserved than anything else in the cave, was a folded piece of parchment. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

With trembling hands and holding my breath, I unfolded the parchment. Even though it was faded and severely damaged, the remnants of a blaze of color met my eyes.

"I found it!" I shouted up to the others.

"Then bring it up already!" Joe yelled back, while Biff shouted, "Come on, Frank! Don't keep us waiting!"

I guess it was selfish of me, but I wanted to look at it for a minute by myself. It was hard to make out much of anything since it had gotten wet and faded and musty over the years. The one thing that stood out – even more clearly now than it had originally since it had little else to compete with – was the gold leaf. That was why it took me all of two seconds to realize that the gold formed letters.

" _Gladius regis,_ " I read. It sounded like Latin. I knew ' _regis'_ meant 'king' and I guessed that ' _gladius_ ' probably had something to do with fighting of some kind, given how it sounded like 'gladiator'. What exactly it meant, I'd have to find out.

"I'm ready to come up!" I called up, putting the parchment back in its box and tucking the box under my arm.

There was no response, but I started putting the harness back on anyway. When I'd finished, I called up again, but again there was no response. I wondered why Joe and Biff didn't answer, but a second later they started pulling me up.

When I had scrambled up onto solid ground, the first thing I heard was Joe's muffled voice. I looked up in surprise to see Joe tied up and gagged and Biff unconscious. Three tall, hefty guys had pulled me up and before I had a chance to really take it in, they pounced on me.

I know some martial arts and tried to use that to my advantage, but unfortunately, there's not much you can do with your hands full. I dropped the box, and immediately one of the guys snatched it up. That must have been all they wanted, because they stopped fighting right away and started running.

I took off after them, but they outdistanced me quickly. They were athletic and in good shape, and I have to admit that after the last thirty-six hours, I wasn't in my top form. I gave up when they were out of sight and went back to Joe and Biff.

By the time I got there, Biff was reviving and Joe had nearly gotten himself loose from the hastily-tied bonds. I finished untying Joe and then turned to Biff to make sure he was all right.

"What happened?" I asked.

Joe shook his head. "Those guys jumped us out of nowhere. They must have followed us and heard you say that you'd found the page. That's what was in the box they got away with, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said. The full import of the situation was sinking in now. With the manuscript page gone, we had no ransom to try to buy Callie's freedom.

Biff was groggy from having been knocked out, but he wasn't too groggy to understand what had happened. "I sure am sorry, guys. I tried to fight them off."

"It's not your fault," Joe told him.

There didn't seem to be anything else to say. For a long time, the three of us just sat there. I don't know what Joe and Biff were thinking about, but all I could think of was Callie and how I'd let her down.


	13. Sword of the King

Chapter XIII: Sword of the King

Joe

"My head hurts," I said, breaking the silence after a long pause.

"Not as much as mine," Biff replied without animation.

"Touché," I replied, with no more energy than Biff.

Frank, Biff, and I sat in silence awhile longer. Frank and I were too tired to think of anything more to say or do. We'd found the page from the manuscript only to let it get stolen.

"Maybe," Biff ventured to say, "maybe it was the kidnappers who stole it. If they have what they want, they might let Callie go."

"I doubt it," I said glumly.

I looked over at Frank, who hadn't spoken for a long time. Frank doesn't cry, ever, but he looked like he felt like doing it now. I thought I'd probably better get him home.

"Come on," I said. "There's nothing else to do here."

Before we'd gotten back to the car, my phone rang. I saw that it was Nancy calling.

"How's the forgerizing going?" I asked, attempting to be cheerful.

Right away, Frank said, probably more out of habit than anything else, "That's not a word, Joe."

I decided to take it as a good sign that he talked at all, but I couldn't resist saying, "I know it's not a word, Frank. I don't remember the last time I slept, though, so you can cut me some slack."

"The – er – forgerizing is going slow," Nancy said. "Have you made any progress today?"

"Yeah." I said it shortly, not meaning to be rude, but the reminder wasn't a pleasant one.

"Well?" Nancy asked, sounding like she was trying to ignore my tone of voice. "What did you learn?"

"That unless Olaf turns out to be a better detective than I give him credit for, we are definitely going to need that forgery, Nancy," I said.

"Don't give up on finding the page yet," Nancy replied. I guess she meant to be encouraging, and how was she supposed to know what had happened? "Especially since this forgery is not going to fool anybody who bothers to look at the manuscript halfway closely."

"We're not giving up," I told her, a little bit of fight coming back to me. "It's just that we learned approximately where the page is, and we're not going to be able to get to it in a week."

"Where is it?" Nancy asked.

I sighed. I really didn't want to have to admit to anyone what just happened. "Call me back tomorrow. I'll tell you then."

I took the wheel and drove back home. It was the third time I had traveled that road and it seemed to get longer every time. When we got back to Bayport, we dropped Biff off at his house and then went to ours. Mom and Aunt Trudy asked us several questions when we came in, but we told them we'd explain everything later.

I went up to my room and practically fell on the bed. I didn't even bother to take my shoes off. By now, I was beyond tired. I was asleep in a few minutes.

When I woke up, it was dark. I checked my phone. It was after nine. If it's that late anyway, why bother getting up before morning? With a yawn, I curled up to sleep some more. Then I realized that I was still wearing my regular clothes and my shoes. I changed into my pajamas and went back to sleep.

It was almost eight when I woke up again. I must have slept for about sixteen hours straight, but it was just what I needed. My headache was gone and that little part of my brain that had been reminding me of sleep constantly for hours was finally quiet.

When I went down to breakfast, I was happy to see that Mom and Aunt Trudy had made a big one. I was nearly starved. I sat down and started heaping my plate with pancakes.

"Good morning, Joe," Mom said to me. "I knew how tired you were, so I didn't want to wake you up before we'd started."

To tell the truth, I hadn't even noticed that they had started yet. Mom, Dad, and Aunt Trudy were all seated around the table, evidently about halfway done with breakfast.

"That's fine, Mom," I replied. "Where's Frank?"

"Still in bed," Dad told me. "What happened to you boys? I heard you came back last night half-dead."

Last night. That reminded me.

"The worst," I said. "We were so close, and then –" I broke off, but then I started telling them the day's happenings from the top. All three of them were frowning by the time I had finished.

"The scoundrels!" Aunt Trudy nearly shouted. "How could they? I'd like to teach them what's what."

I smiled faintly. Aunt Trudy doesn't totally approve of Frank and my mystery-solving, but she's as loyal as they come.

"What are you going to do now?" Mom asked.

"Well, I thought up a plan, but Frank doesn't like it very much," I replied. I told them about my forgery idea.

Dad seemed to think the matter over. "Frank's got a point that a good forgery would take far too much time and talent to work," he said, "but I think something can be done with this idea. It wouldn't be the first time that a fake ransom has been used. I've had some luck with that myself in the past."

"Dad, would you help?" I asked. Most of the time, Frank and I like to work on our mysteries completely on our own, but I was willing to admit we needed help on this one. And I would way rather have Dad help that Detective Lieutenant Olaf.

"I'd be glad to help," Dad said, "but we'll need to get the police in on it, too."

There went the idea of having Dad help instead of Olaf.

"How soon will Nancy have the fake page ready?" Dad asked.

"I don't know," I replied. "I'll call her."

"That can wait until after breakfast," Mom cut in.

Okay, I could go along with that. I had nearly finished by the time Frank came downstairs. I had the feeling he hadn't slept as well as I had.

Mom and Aunt Trudy were so smotheringly sympathetic to him that he had no trouble guessing, "Joe already told you about yesterday, huh?"

"Don't give up yet, Frank," Dad told him. "I think Joe's idea about substituting the forgery might work, with careful planning."

"What if the kidnappers are the ones that stole the real page, though?" Frank asked.

There wasn't much of an answer to that, so I didn't give one. Instead, I asked, "Did you get a good look at that page? I'm going to call Nancy, and it might give her some ideas on making the forgery."

"I did," Frank said. "I forgot about it until now. It was so damaged I could barely make out the words or the images. The only thing that still stood out was the gold leaf. It spelled out the words ' _Gladius regis._ '"

"Hmm. Latin," I said. "Shouldn't be too hard to find out what it means."

It took me only about five seconds to do an Internet search and learn that the words meant 'sword of the king' in Latin.

"Well, that's helpful," I said, a little sarcastically.

"If worse comes to worst, the kidnappers might accept the message itself as the ransom," Dad commented.

"That's true," Frank replied, his voice sounding a little brighter than it had for some time.

"They might not believe it, though, so the forgery is still a good backup plan," Dad continued. "Ask if Nancy will be willing to deliver it herself, though. I wouldn't trust the mail with something this important."

"She could stay with us," Frank said. "Joe could bunk on the floor of my room and she could have his room."  
"Loaning my room out again, eh, Frank?" I teased him, relieved that he could muster that much humor. At any rate, I hoped he was joking.

"I can sleep on Joe's floor then. I don't really care," Frank replied. Maybe he wasn't joking.

I put in the call to Nancy. "How's it going, Nancy?" I asked when she answered.

"I haven't actually worked on the manuscript since last night," she said. "I got all the wording done then. I still have the illustrations to do. I'm afraid that might take even longer."

"Good," I replied. "Not good that it'll take awhile, but good that you haven't gotten started on the illustrations yet. You see, we found the real manuscript."

"That's great!" Nancy said.

"But then we lost it again," I confessed. "So we're still going to need that forgery, but now we have some idea of what the pictures look like. It also needs to be really, really damaged."

"How did you lose the page?" Nancy asked.

"It got stolen," I replied reluctantly. I told her the whole story, and then had Frank give as much of a description as he could.

"Okay, I can work with that," Nancy said. "When do you need the parchment?"

"As soon as possible," I replied. "In fact, Dad thinks you should deliver it in person, if you're willing."

"Of course I'm willing," Nancy said. "I'll head out there tomorrow, whether I have the page done or not. If it's not done, I can finish it in Bayport."

"Great, Nancy, thanks," I replied. "Let us know when your flight will be coming in, so we can pick you up. By the way, Frank did see the message in that parchment. It's 'sword of the king.' Does that mean anything to you?"

"It's in keeping with the theme of the other message," Nancy said. "That one was 'where dragons roam.' As for what they mean, I'm as much in the dark as you are."


	14. Finishing Touches

Chapter XIV: Finishing Touches

Nancy

As soon as I hung up the phone from talking to Joe, I started right in on working on the manuscript. I first sketched a few practice designs on a regular piece of paper before I chose one that I liked. Then I started sketching it very carefully onto the parchment.

It was about seven thirty in the morning when I started – Bayport and River Heights are in different time zones, so it was later than that there when Joe called me. By the time I had chosen my design for the manuscript, it was almost nine. Hannah had called me for breakfast before that, but I didn't want to take any more time away from my work than I had to.

Soon after I had begun, Bess and George dropped in. They had gotten a little behind on what was going on, so they were surprised when I told them what I was doing.

"I know you're good at painting and drawing, Nance, but do you really think this plan is going to work?" George asked.

I lowered my pencil and frowned. "Honestly, I don't think there's a very good chance. I've tried this sort of thing before and it worked once – with that stone tablet, remember? But once isn't a very good batting average."

"Then why didn't you just tell Joe you think it's a dumb idea?" George asked.

"It's a last resort sort of plan, in case the police don't find Callie before the deadline," I told her. "In that case, what else can you do?"

"It sounds risky to me," Bess commented. "But I guess you're right, unless someone comes up with a better plan."

"We could steal the page from the library here," George suggested. When Bess and I stared at her, she grinned and said, "Just kidding, guys."

"If you want to help, George, could you see if I can still get a reservation on a plane to Bayport tomorrow?" I suggested.

"Sure thing," George agreed and got to work on her phone. After a few minutes, she said, "There's one leaving at six in the morning tomorrow. There's a connection in New York with a two-hour layover, and then it gets into Bayport at quarter to eleven their time."

"Sounds fine," I said.

By that evening, I had gotten most of the color applied to the parchment. I still hadn't figured out how to put gold leaf on or where to get the gold leaf in the first place, so I decided I'd have to do without. Ned found a shiny gold paint, and I hoped that that would do the trick.

My flight came in a little later than it was scheduled, so it was almost ten past eleven when I arrived in Bayport. Frank and Joe met me at the airport. Joe gave me an enthusiastic welcome, and while Frank tried to, I could tell his heart wasn't in it.

"How are you guys doing?" I asked, looking more at Frank than Joe. I couldn't help but think of the time that Ned had been kidnapped and how sick I'd been until I'd found him.

Frank shrugged. "Okay. How's the parchment coming?"

I blushed a little. "I'm sorry, guys. I've done the best I could. It's not going to fool anybody for more than two seconds."

"That's all the more we need," Joe assured me. "We spent all day yesterday outlining our plans with Dad and the police. It will work."

"Maybe," Frank added.

"It will work," Joe repeated himself. "Dad thinks it will."

"He thinks it might," Frank said. "The police think it's crazy, and I have to agree."

"Olaf's the one who thinks it's crazy, and he'd say that about any plan that we'd come up with," Joe replied.

"Look, guys, maybe this isn't the place to be talking about this," I broke in. "Let's get to your house first and then we can go over the whole plan."

When we got to the Hardy house, Frank and Joe's parents and their aunt Gertrude were waiting for us to come. I'd met them a time or two before this, and they greeted me cordially.

I began taking out the parchment and my supplies. "I need to finish this," I explained. "Tell me your plans while I work."

"That looks great, Nancy," Joe said when he saw the parchment. "It'd fool anybody."

"Anybody who doesn't have a clue what they're looking for," I replied. "I hope your plan doesn't involve the kidnappers getting a chance to look at this closely."

"It doesn't," Frank said.

"Here's what we're gonna do," Joe said. "The police aren't going to let us go through with the plan until they're satisfied they can't find Callie. So, the last day before our time's up, Olaf is going to send a bunch of plainclothes detectives to patrol the area around the address the kidnappers gave us. It's on the waterfront, and there's always lots of people milling around there. A few hours later, when it's starting to get dark, Frank's going to go down there. He'll give them just a glimpse of the parchment. Between getting only a glimpse and it being partly dark, the kidnappers shouldn't notice that the parchment is a fake. Then, he'll insist that they let Callie go before he'll hand the ransom over. As soon as Callie's safe, the police'll come in and round up the kidnappers."

"Sounds simple," I commented.

"Simple enough for even Olaf to handle it," Joe replied.

"I thought the kidnappers said that Frank had to come alone," I said.

"They did," Frank confirmed. "We're hoping that they won't realize the police are police if they get there so much earlier than I do."

I set to work on the parchment some more. For the most part, the Hardys left me to work alone. In a few hours, I had the illustrations finished. Then I set it aside so that it could completely dry before I began the aging process.

The next morning, I used the coffee and baking process to make the parchment appear old. I also dripped water on it, tore it, burned the edges, and basically did anything that either Joe or I could think of to make it look as damaged as possible.

"Does it look as beat up as the real one?" Joe asked Frank, holding the parchment up so that Frank could see.

"I guess," he replied. "It doesn't really matter, though. The kidnappers didn't see the real one."

"True," Joe agreed. "Well, I guess we're as ready as we'll ever be. Here's hoping the plan works."

"You do have a backup plan in case it doesn't?" I asked.

"Well, ideally, Frank and Callie will be able to walk right out of there before the action starts," Joe explained. "Frank's not going to go past the doorway, though, and the police will be right there. If anything goes wrong, Frank can get out of there fast. The kidnappers will chase him, and the police will catch the kidnappers. Olaf's a real loser, but the other officers are dependable enough to carry through."

"Except they'll leave at least one of the kidnappers inside the building to guard Callie, and then that one will have a hostage," I pointed out.

"There is that," Joe admitted.

"It's not a great plan," Frank said. "It's not even a good plan, and I'm afraid it's not going to work. We don't have a lot of choice, though."

I nodded. It was a tough situation. Frank and Joe didn't have any leads to Callie that the police weren't in a better position to follow up on, so there was nothing more any of us could do. We all sat around the Hardys' living room, glumly thinking over the plan and trying to convince ourselves that it would work.

"What about those three guys?" I asked suddenly. "The ones who stole the manuscript page. Have you looked into them at all?"

"Not really," Joe told me. "They don't seem to fit in anywhere. At first, we were afraid they might be the kidnappers, but the kidnappers haven't contacted us in any way since then, so we think they probably aren't. The guy who stole the copies of the journal wasn't one of them, so they might all be involved together or they might not."

"Then there's most likely two sets of criminals after the manuscript pages," I mused. "There's also my prowler in River Heights, Myron Kelting, and the guy from the library. By the way, did you guys ever get a chance to ID him?"

"No," Joe said. "We've been too busy. Do you think he has anything to do with this?"

"It could be," I replied. "He could also be Myron Kelting. I didn't get a good look at the prowler."

"He sounds a little bit like our burglar," Joe said. "But what was he after? He could have been trying to steal your photos of the pages – it would be way easier for him to get those honestly."

"Maybe he was just trying to learn if I'd found anything out yet," I suggested. "Although the tactics seem a little extreme for that, too."

"Come on, Frank, you always like to act like you're the brains." Joe turned to his brother. "What do you think? Are Nancy's villains part of our villains' gangs or not?"

"They could be," Frank admitted. "I think the bigger question is how are Sinclair and Miller tied up in this? It can't be a coincidence that they asked us to work on these cases so close together, and they've both acted strange since day one."

"But it doesn't make sense for them to be behind what's been going on," Joe protested. "They wouldn't have to steal or kidnap or burglarize to get the manuscript or the messages in the manuscript pages. We were going to hand those over all along."

I ran my fingers through my hair, thinking. "What if they are behind it, but they're working together?" I said. "Sinclair hired Kelting to find out what I know, and Miller's behind the trouble here to get the manuscript page from you two."

"But we don't think the kidnappers and the crooks who took the page are working together," Joe reminded me.

"That's right," I agreed. "What about the address that the kidnappers gave? Did you or the police check it out?"

"The police did," Frank said. "It's just a warehouse along the waterfront. The kidnappers don't seem to be using it as a hideout or anything, so it must just be a drop point."

Before any more ideas could be thrown out, Joe's phone started ringing.

"Hello?" he said into it. His brows furrowed as he listened to what the caller was saying. He hung up without saying another word and then turned to Frank and me with a serious expression.

"The kidnappers?" Frank guessed.

"Right," Joe said. "They somehow found out that we found the manuscript, although they don't seem to know that it was stolen. They've moved up the timetable. They want the ransom tonight."


	15. Into the Lions' Den

Chapter XV: Into the Lions' Den

Frank

My heart skipped a beat at Joe's announcement. We had to put the plan into action right now. I had to admit, I was nervous. I'd spent the last couple of days thinking of all the dozens of things that could go wrong with the plan and desperately trying to think of ways to improve. There was no more time for that now. It was do or die.

Joe jumped to his feet and ran to get Dad. Nancy looked like she wanted to do something but didn't know what. I pounced on Joe's phone, which he had left behind, and looked at the number that had called him. It was different than the one that had called my phone the first time the kidnappers had contacted us. I wrote it down and then called Olaf's number.

"Yeah?" the detective said. No doubt by now he recognized Joe's and my numbers, so that was probably the main reason for his unprofessional greeting.

"The kidnappers just called again," I told him. "They're moving things up. They want the ransom tonight."

Olaf muttered something that sounded like swearing. "Okay," he said louder. "We're gonna have to get on this then. Is your scheme all ready to go? Do you have that fake parchment?"

"Yeah," I said. "In fact, Nancy just finished it a little while ago. Can you get your people on it?"

"I'm on it," Olaf replied. "When are you going to show?"

"Around eight," I told him. "It will just be getting dark by then."

"You're going to have to do better than that," Olaf said. "Make it eight o'clock exactly. And by that, I mean I want you walking in that door right at eight. Not before or after. Understand?"

"I understand," I assured him.

"Play it cool and you'll be fine," Olaf told me. "And whatever you do, don't go all the way into that warehouse."

By now, Joe and Dad had come into the room.

"Olaf?" Dad asked. When I nodded, he held out his hand. "Let me talk to him." When I had handed the phone to him, he said, "Olaf, this is Fenton Hardy. When will you have all your people in position? All right. I'm going to be there, too. No, there's not going to be a discussion about it. Okay. That will be fine."

"What about us, Dad? Nancy and me?" Joe asked.

"There's no way we're going to get Olaf to agree to that," Dad told him. "Frankly, I don't think you should be in the area, either. The kidnappers will definitely recognize you, Joe."

"Couldn't we at least watch?" Nancy asked. "We could act as lookout from the top of one of the nearby warehouses."

"That's a great idea," Joe agreed.

"The police will have their own lookouts posted," Dad told them.

"We wouldn't be in the way," Joe insisted.

"I'll tell you what," Dad said. "You two can hang out a few blocks over and listen in on the police frequency."

"It's better than nothing," Joe grumbled.

That afternoon was one of the longest in my entire life. Ordinarily, I would have been a lot less nervous doing the exact same thing for a different reason. Now, though, there was a lot riding on this one.

Before he left to join in the stakeout, a few hours before eight, Dad gave me an earbud to use. He told me that it was on the same frequency that Olaf would be using and that it would allow the police to hear what was happening around me and give me instructions if that would be necessary.

By the time I left at eight, Joe was still moping around about not getting to be in on the action. To tell the truth, I would have felt a little better about the whole thing if I knew Joe and Nancy were on hand, but there was no changing Olaf's mind. Complaining about it wouldn't help. As I left the house, Nancy was trying to cheer Joe up. They were going to wait a couple of minutes before they took our motorcycles.

I parked right in front of 311 Waterfront Street. I didn't see any of the police, which was a good thing, but it also made me just a trifle uneasy that they might not be there after all.

A second later, I heard Olaf's voice over the earbud say, "We're in place, Frank. When you're ready." It was the first time I've ever been relieved to hear him.

I gripped the case that the parchment was in a little tighter and then went toward the door. It was closed, so I knocked on it. The door was opened a crack and someone peered out at me.

"We were beginning to think you weren't coming," the man said, opening the door wider. "Come on in and we'll talk."

"We can talk here," I replied.

The guy was wearing a mask, so all I could see of him was that he was ordinary height and very muscular.

"Have it your way," the guy replied. "Do you have the page?"

For answer, I held the case up and opened it just enough for him to see the parchment inside. Then I slammed it shut before he could take a good look.

"Hey, what's the idea?" he asked, yanking his hand back so that his fingers didn't get caught in the case.

"First you give Callie back, then you can have the page," I told him.

"She's not here," the guy said.

I'd thought of this possibility, but when the words came, they felt like a blow. If Callie was being held someplace else, the chances of this scheme working went down tremendously.

"Stick to the plan, kid," I heard Olaf say in my ear.

I shook myself. "What do you mean she's not here?"

"What I said," the kidnapper replied. "She's not in this warehouse."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Hand over the page and I'll tell you," the guy said.

"No," I replied. "The way this is going down is Callie gets released and then you get the ransom. Not the other way around."

"You'd think you cared about that old piece of paper more than the girl," the guy said.

"If I did, I wouldn't be here," I replied, trying to stay as cool as possible. "Once I hand over the parchment, though, what guarantee do I have that you'll let Callie go?"

"My word," the guy said.

Seriously. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Honestly, kid, what's to keep me from just taking that page now?" the kidnapper asked.

"There's an alarm wired to this case," I told him. "If you try to open it without putting in the access code first, it will send out an alarm and a GPS signal to the police. It'll even work if you try to break one of the sides of the case or rip the hinges out. I'm not going to give you the code until and unless you let Callie go."  
This was actually true and was one of Dad's innovations to the plan.

"Okay. If you wanna see the girl safe, you can come along with me when I take that parchment to my partner, who's holding her," the kidnapper continued. "Take it or leave it."

"Don't do it, kid," Olaf coached me. "We'll move in and then make this guy talk."

"No," I said sharply, to both Olaf and the kidnapper.

"No?" the guy repeated.

"I mean, I won't go anywhere in a car with you," I explained. "You go in one car, I'll follow in another. Alone."

I hoped Olaf would take the hint and not spoil anything. The police could easily follow both cars, and I should be relatively safe.

"Oh, yeah," the guy said with a sort of laugh mixed with a snort. "So you'll have plenty of time to call the police privately and tell them exactly where you're going."

"I don't have any way to contact them in my car. You can check," I told him. "In fact, you can take my car. I'll drive yours."

"I suppose your car has some sort of tracking device on it," the kidnapper countered. "I'll tell you what. I'll go along with your idea. I've got two cars here. You drive one, I'll drive the other. But I'm gonna have to make sure you're not bugged somehow."

I pretended to scratch my ear, but I really pulled the earbud out. I hoped the kidnapper wouldn't notice. To distract him, I said at the same time, "Okay, but your buddy who drove the second car better not be hiding in the back seat."

The fellow came out of the warehouse and led me to where two cars were parked. My heart was pounding the whole time – I hoped Olaf wouldn't try to jump the guy. Fortunately, there was no sound from the police.

When we got to the cars, the kidnapper took some kind of scanner out of the glove box of one of them and used it to check me over, apparently for electronic devices. I was glad I'd gotten rid of the earbud before that.

Evidently satisfied, he handed me a key and told me to get into the second car. I checked it over before I got in and saw that nobody was inside it. I was about to get into the driver's seat when I heard a shout.

Another fellow in a mask ran from around the side of the warehouse, shouting, "Cops! The place is swarming with them!"

The one that I'd been talking to took just enough time to mutter, "You double-crosser," before he pulled a gun out of his pocket. "Get in," he told me.

With a gun pointed at me, there really wasn't anything else I could do. I had too much adrenaline going to feel much of anything as I got into the car just as several shots were fired. I didn't know who was shooting, but it wasn't convincing this guy to stick around. He threw his car into gear and tore away, tires squealing.

I was half-tempted to try something desperate, but I realized there was nothing to do. The car was going to fast to jump out without being killed and I couldn't overpower my captor without causing an accident and probably getting shot into the bargain, so I sat tight. Once I dared to glance out the back and I thought I saw two motorcycles following us.

"Sit down and don't move," the kidnapper growled at me.

I sat back down. The motorcycles could be the police or they could be Joe and Nancy or they could be someone who happened to be going the same way. The kidnapper pulled so many sharp turns, though, that I was sure the motorcycles were tailing us. I'd been in enough car chases to recognize evasive measures.

The chase went on for several minutes, which is a very long time when you're being held at gunpoint. After making several sharp turns in a row, the kidnapper suddenly pulled into a driveway and switched off both his lights and engine in flash. The motorcycles had been far enough behind that they didn't round the bend until after he had pulled this trick. They roared on by.

Without anyone pursuing him, the kidnapper pulled back out of the driveway and made his way at a more leisurely pace. He went out of town and stopped at an old, abandoned farmhouse. Urging me along at gunpoint, he took me inside.

Once we were inside, he took his mask off. He was blond and I judged him to be in his thirties. Another fellow met us at the door. This one looked a little like my kidnapper, but he was older and had dark hair.

"What happened? What's he doing here?" the older one asked.

"He tried to double-cross us by bringing in the cops," the younger one replied.

"What about Bryan? Where is he?" the dark-haired fellow snapped.

His partner shook his head. "I don't know. The police probably got him."

The older one saw the case in my hands and snatched it away from me. "At least we have what we were after."

"There's just one problem," the blond guy replied. "The kid here says that this case has an alarm that will send a GPS signal to the cops if we open it without entering the access code."

"What's the access code?" the other asked me.

I didn't reply.

"Listen here, kid," he said, turning to look at me. "If you don't give us that code, we'll kill your girlfriend and beat it out of you anyway."

 _A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this far! A very special thank you to Cherylann Rivers, max2013, Jilsen, ulstergirl, Torchwood Cardiff, and guest reviewers for your reviews!_


	16. Hot on the Trail

Chapter XVI: Hot on the Trail

Joe

I learned against my motorcycle, swinging my helmet by the strap as I listened to the conversation between Frank and the kidnapper over the radio. Nancy was still sitting astride Frank's motorcycle, listening intently as well.

I was still unhappy that we couldn't come any closer to the action than a few blocks away. Okay, I realized that the police, Dad, Frank, Nancy, and literally everybody else was hoping there wouldn't be much action – that the kidnappers would just let Callie go and then they would be caught without a fight. I was being realistic, though. There was a good chance it wouldn't go down that way, and I wanted to help out if anything went wrong.

"Okay. If you wanna see the girl safe, you can come along with me when I take that parchment to my partner, who's holding her," we heard the kidnapper's voice come over the radio. "Take it or leave it."

"Don't do it, kid," Olaf said. "We'll move in and then make this guy talk."

I rolled my eyes. "That idiot," I muttered. "He's going to ruin everything."

"Shh," Nancy told me.

I'd missed a little of the conversation. The next thing I heard was Frank saying, "I won't go anywhere in a car with you. You go in one car, I'll follow in another. Alone."

"Oh, yeah," the kidnapper snorted. "So you'll have plenty of time to call the police privately and tell them exactly where you're going."

"I don't have any way to contact them in my car. You can check," Frank offered. "In fact, you can take my car. I'll drive yours."

"I suppose your car has some sort of tracking device on it," the kidnapper countered. "I'll tell you what. I'll go along with your idea. I've got two cars here. You drive one, I'll drive the other. But I'm gonna have to make sure you're not bugged somehow."

Frank said something in reply to this, but there was a glitch of some kind in the radio right then. After that, we didn't hear anything more from Frank or the kidnapper.

"Frank! What are doing? Frank?" Olaf's voice came over the radio. When Frank didn't respond, Olaf said, "All right, everyone move in, but don't shoot unless you have to."

I groaned. This sounded like the end. A second later, there was a commotion over the radio. Several people were talking over it at once.

"What's happening?" Nancy asked, but I didn't have an answer for her.

"They're in a silver Chevy four-door," a cop's voice came over the radio. "He's got Frank with him. He's headed southbound on Waterfront."

"That's right toward us," I said tightly.

"Right there!" Nancy shouted, pointing out a car of that general description that was barreling in our direction.

She threw her helmet on, kicked her motorcycle into gear, and raced after it. I followed as fast as I could, but my motorcycle was slow starting. I wrecked it awhile back and, even though I was able to fix it up, it had never been the same since.

"Of all the times," I muttered.

A second later, the engine roared to life. I started after the car and Nancy, who were booking along enough that my short delay put me quite a bit behind them. I kept looking out for the police to join in the chase, but they didn't show.

The driver of the car must have realized he was being chased. He screeched around several corners without slowing down. Nancy was handling the whole thing like a champ, whipping around each corner only a second or two behind the car. I, on the other hand, felt like I was losing ground.

I glanced down at my speedometer. It registered 65. I knew that wasn't right. It must have stopped working again. I gave the bike more gas and tried to lessen the gap between me and the suspect.

Then the kidnapper turned onto Jefferson Street. That's a long, winding street that goes up a hill. It's lined on both sides with residential housing. I saw the taillights for both vehicles I was following several times, but then they would disappear around another curve. By the time we were nearly at the top of the hill, I only saw Nancy's light. She stopped at the first cross street and waited for me. I pulled up next to her.

"He's gone," she told me. "I tried to keep up with him, but I had to slow down a little to get around those turns in the dark. I didn't think he'd get this far ahead of me."

I glanced up and down the streets as if I was expecting to see the kidnap car still driving on one of them. A hopeless feeling came over me.

"Say!" Nancy said. "There were a lot of driveways along that street. I'll bet he pulled into one, switched off his lights, and then went back down the other way after we'd passed."

"You're probably right," I agreed. "Maybe we can still catch him."

We whipped the motorcycles around and headed down the hill. When we got to the bottom, though, the car was nowhere to be seen. Dejected, we headed back toward Waterfront Street.

The police were still there, milling around and making radio calls. I saw Olaf sitting on the hood of one of the unmarked police cars, talking on his cell phone. I marched straight up to him.

"What's the matter with you?" I demanded.

Olaf waved his hand at me and half-turned away. "Later, kid, I'm talking to the chief."

I seriously did not care. "What was the big idea moving in right then? Why didn't any of your people at least chase the car?"

"Only one person chewing me out at a time, kid, okay?" Olaf said.

It was a little bit soothing to know that Collig was chewing the guy out, too, but it didn't change anything. For that matter, me chewing Olaf out wouldn't change anything. Then again, it would sure feel good.

"Joe, let's go find your dad and find out what happened," Nancy suggested.

I was about to follow her when Olaf hung up and turned to us.

"Where were you two when this happened?" he snapped.

"Exactly where we said we'd be," I returned. "Why didn't you stick to the plan?"

"Me? I didn't stick to the plan?" Olaf raged. "It was your brother who took out his earbud and was going to leave the area with the kidnapper. That was not part of the plan."

"Don't try to shuffle your mistake off on Frank," I told him. "The goal of the plan was to find Callie. That's what Frank was trying to do. You could have followed. With Frank in a different car from the kidnapper, it's not like he could have been used as a hostage or anything. Not until you decided to ruin everything by moving your people in."

"I know you think you're some kind of wonder detective, kid," Olaf said. "But don't try to tell me how to do my job. I have far more years' experience than a couple of teenagers combined."

He really liked to use that one against me, didn't he?

"Look," Nancy broke in. "Joe and I chased the kidnapper, but we lost him. I got the license number, though."

"You chased him, did you?" Olaf asked, turning on Nancy now. "Who do you think you are? I know all about you – I checked. You're just as much trouble as these Hardy kids combined."

"Who told you that?" Nancy asked.

"One of the city council members in your hometown," Olaf replied. "Councilwoman Scallari. She gave me a full rundown on all the havoc you've wreaked on your own town. You'd better keep your nose out of things in mine."

"Of all the people he could have checked with," Nancy said under her breath.

"Come on, Nancy, let's not waste time talking to this loser," I suggested.

We started walking away, but Olaf said, "Hold it. I've got to take your statements down if you were witnesses."

We told him everything we knew, and then he gave us the go-ahead to leave. I asked him where Dad was, and he told me that Dad had joined in the dragnet that the police had put out looking for the kidnap car.

"By the way," Olaf said in conclusion, "we did catch one of the kidnappers. He won't talk or give his name, though. Chief says to let you know if the guy changes his mind."

Nancy and I went back to the motorcycles and stopped to collect our thoughts for a minute. During that minute, my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize, and I for a moment I thought it might be the kidnappers again.

"Hello?" I said, answering it.

"Is this Joe?" a girl's timid voice came over the line. "This is Tanya. You know, the barista from the Crème and Sugar?"

"Right. I remember," I said.

"I – I didn't tell the truth before, when you were asking me about what happened to your friend," Tanya admitted. "I'm ready to tell the truth now. Could you meet me somewhere, and we could talk?"

I was very eager to talk to her and learn what the truth was. I'd suspected from the start that she had been lying about the old guy with the cane and not seeing any more than that. Just now, though, the timing was making me suspicious. What if this was a trap?

"Okay," I said, deciding I had to take the chance. "How about Tyler's Pizza? It's just down the street from where you work." Actually, I picked that one because it's always busy, but there was no point in telling her that.

"I know," Tanya said. "All right. I'll be there in ten minutes. Please, don't bring anyone else with you. I don't want to have to talk about this to very many people."

"Okay," I replied. I didn't like the sound of that arrangement, considering that Tanya might not necessarily come alone. When I hung up, I told Nancy about the arrangement. "Why don't you come along and keep watch from another booth? I doubt she could do much in a crowded place like Tyler's, even if she did bring some friends along, but it never hurts to have backup."

"Sure thing," Nancy agreed.

We set out for the pizzeria. I hung back so that Nancy would get there a little while before me. I saw her go inside, and then I parked my bike and went in myself. Tanya was already there. I sat down at her table.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," I replied. "What's on your mind?"

"Well," Tanya answered. "I told you that your friend, Callie, left the Crème and Sugar with an old guy with a cane."

"Yes, I know," I said.

Nancy had gone up to the front desk, apparently to ask some questions. Now that she saw where I had sat down, she came and claimed the table next to Tanya's, but behind Tanya's back.

"Okay, well, the truth was that the guy wasn't that old," Tanya told me. "He said that he and Callie were playing a joke on some of Callie's friends, and that if anyone asked to tell them that Callie had left with an old guy. You seemed so serious, though, that I started to wonder if the guy was telling the truth. It's been bugging me for the last few days, and I finally decided I'd better tell you."

"Do you know who the guy was?" I asked.

"Yeah," Tanya replied. "He'd been coming in a lot before that. He said his name was Dalton Miller."

I looked past Tanya's shoulder at Nancy. From her surprised expression, it wasn't hard to guess that she was thinking the same thing I was.


	17. The Abandoned Farm

Chapter XVII: The Abandoned Farm

Nancy

Joe was looking right back at me and seemed just as surprised as I was by Tanya Marth's announcement that Callie's kidnapper had been named Dalton Miller. Could it be a coincidence that he had the same last name as my client, Craig Miller? Miller is a common last name, so it could be, but I could tell that both Joe and I were thinking otherwise.

"Can you describe him?" Joe asked Tanya.

Tanya sighed. "Yeah, um, okay. He's blond. Around six feet, maybe a little shorter. He's really big. He must work out, like, all the time."

From Joe's expression, I thought the description must have rung a bell with him. It didn't mean anything to me.

"What else do you know about this guy?" Joe asked.

"Nothing, really," Tanya said. "He did talk to this one old guy a couple times when he came in here. I'm not making this part up. They didn't seem to get along all that great, though."

"Do you remember anything they said to each other? Anything at all?" Joe asked.

Tanya swallowed and looked down. "I try not to listen in on customers' conversations. Last time I saw them in there together – it was the night before the whole thing with Callie – I did hear Mr. Miller say something about meeting the old guy at a farm."

"A farm," Joe mused.

I hadn't been in Bayport very many times before, but I did know that there were quite a few farms – both in use and abandoned – in the area. This information was better than nothing, but it still had a long way to go to be really helpful.

"Wait!" Tanya said after a pause. "There was something more. He said they would meet at the old mill on a farm. Is that helpful?"

"Yeah, it is," Joe told her. "Is that everything?" When Tanya nodded, Joe said, "Thanks for telling me this, Tanya. You just might have been a big help."

Tanya nodded. "I've gotta go. I'm not going to get into trouble over this, am I?"

"Nobody'll hear it from me," Joe assured her.

Still looking nervous and upset, Tanya got up and left the pizzeria. I moved over to her vacated chair and sat down facing Joe.

"Is this lead going to get us anywhere?" I asked.

"I think there's a good chance," Joe replied. "There aren't too many mils around. I mean, there weren't all that many watermills even in the old days, and most of the old windmills have been torn down or moved someplace for decoration. Whichever type of mill we're looking for, there won't be that many place to look."

"I guess," I said, not totally convinced. "We'll still have to drive all over and look for them, though. How about we gather up some of your friends to help us? The more people we have looking, the more time we'll save."

"Good idea," Joe agreed. "Considering recent developments, I'm sure Tony and Phil will take some time off to help. That means there are six of them, plus us two, so there'll be eight of us."

"We can split into two groups of three and a group of two," I added. "Each group can take the area to the north, south, or west of Bayport. We don't need to bother with the east, since I doubt we'll find too many mills in the ocean."

"I'll get right to calling them," Joe said. "First, though, Nancy, Dalton Miller? Do you think there's any connection to Craig Miller?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "It's possible, but Miller is a very common last name."

"Detective rule number twenty-six is don't assume anything is a coincidence," Joe said. "But detective rule number twenty-seven is don't completely rule out the possibility that something's a coincidence."

"Yeah, that sums it up," I agreed. "Tanya's description of Dalton Miller seemed to remind you of something."  
"It did," Joe admitted. "That burglar that stole the copy of the journal. Her description wasn't thorough enough to be certain, but it was enough to be suspicious."

"While you call your friends, I think I'll give my buddy Craig Miller a call," I told him. "Just to see what he has to say about a thing or two. If he picks up, that is."

I placed the call and waited. It rang a couple of times, and then I heard Craig Miller say, "Hello, Nancy? You're not still working on that case, are you?"

"I'm afraid I don't have a choice," I replied. "Sinclair or no Sinclair. It definitely seems tied up in the disappearances of two of my friends. I'm not about to give up now."

"Nancy, I got you into this, and I'm sorry," Mr. Miller said. He paused. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I need you to tell me everything you know about a couple of things. For starters, Evan Sinclair."

"Sinclair," Mr. Miller said. "The guy's bad news. He's after the treasure, too. I guess you probably figured that one out already. He has some information about where one of the pages is that no one else has been able to locate. I talked to him, but he wasn't willing to share. In fact, he told me I'd stay healthier if I kept out of it."

"Interesting," I replied, "but unless he gave you some reason to think he could back his threat up, that's not a reason to give up the case."

Miller gave a dry half-laugh. "Your friends getting kidnapped isn't reason enough?"

"Why would Sinclair do that to the detectives he himself hired?" I countered.

Miller was at a loss for words for a second. "How should I know? You're the detective."

"Next question," I went on. "Why are so many people out to find – and maybe even kill – for a legendary treasure?"

"You just said the key words – legendary treasure," Miller replied. "This thing is worth millions, not to mention the fame that you'd get from finding it."

"What exactly is 'it'?" I asked.

"Gold, artifacts, who knows?" Miller replied. "I've got to go. I'm going to be out of cell reception for a few days, so you won't be able to contact me. I hope you find your friends – but if I were you, I'd consider leaving the matter to the police."

As I hung up the phone, Joe asked, "Well?"

"He was evasive, but nothing conclusive," I told him.

Joe nodded. "Figures. Well, everyone agreed to come. Chet, Iola, and Biff are taking the north and Tony, Phil, and Jerry will cover the south. That leaves the west to the two of us. You game to get started tonight?"

"Let's go," I replied.

We took the motorcycles out and rode out of town. Joe, I supposed, had explored all the area around Bayport, and so I followed him to several old farms. A couple of them had windmills, but we found nothing suspicious there. Finally, tired and discouraged, we headed back to the Hardy house.

The adults had all evidently gone to bed already – it was after twelve by now. I have to admit, I was a little relieved. It's always tough to deal with the family of a kidnap victim, even one as brave as the Hardy family.

I was woken up the next morning by Joe knocking on my door and calling my name. I glanced at the clock on my phone and saw that it was only five.

"Nancy? You ready to go?" Joe asked.

I groaned a little at the loss of sleep, but I knew finding Frank and Callie was more important.

"I'll be there in a minute," I called back.

While I was getting dressed, Joe grabbed some granola bars out of the kitchen. He handed me a couple before we started out, apologizing that he didn't give me time for a real breakfast.

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "I probably wouldn't have even thought of this much."

We started our search where we had left off a few hours earlier. At around eight-thirty, we rode up to a farmhouse that was well off the beaten path. A windmill stood a couple hundred feet beyond it.

"This could be it," Joe said hopefully. "It would make a great hideout."

I looked around at the unkempt yard in front of the house. I noticed several sets of well-defined tire tracks where dirt showed.

"Someone's been here very recently," I told Joe.

"Let's see if there's anything inside the house," he said.

We tried the door and it opened with a loud creak. We stepped carefully, testing the floor to make sure that the boards weren't rotten. Although some of them sagged, they didn't seem to be in immediate danger of collapsing.

Joe and I could have searched the place faster if we had split up, but we were both thinking of potential kidnappers who might be around so we stayed together. We looked around the main floor first. The floors and the dilapidated table, chairs, and cupboard that had been left behind were covered in dust. With an air of triumph, Joe pointed out several footprints all over the floor.

"We should take pictures of them," he said.

I nodded, took out my phone, and began snapping photos of the prints. They were all we found on the first floor.

Next we went up to the attic. A very musty assortment of cardboard boxes and newspapers were the only things we saw there. Out of curiosity, I picked up one of the papers to look at the date – June 12, 1951.

"It doesn't look like anyone's been up here since that paper become yesterday's news," Joe said. "That just leaves the cellar."

The cellar was underneath a trapdoor in the kitchen floor. It creaked terribly when Joe opened it and we saw wooden steps below. I started down, but I froze when I heard a sound from the cellar.

Joe and I looked at each other hopefully – the sound was definitely human and sounded like someone who was trying to talk through a gag. Joe and I threw caution to the wind and ran down the steps. We switched on our flashlights and cast the beams around the cellar, which was larger than we expected.

The air was full of floating dust particles, which made it hard to see anything. The sounds became louder and more urgent. Joe and I both shone our lights right on the person, who was bound and gagged. But the person wasn't Frank or Callie. It was an old man.

"Evan Sinclair!" Joe said in surprise.


	18. Captives

Chapter XVIII: Captives

Frank

It's got to be one of the worst feelings in the world to be held captive by people who are threatening to kill you and your girlfriend if you don't give them something you haven't got. It's true that I had the code to the alarm on the case, which was technically what the kidnappers were asking for, but I knew what they really wanted was the manuscript page, and I didn't have that.

"If you –" I paused, unable to say the word. "If you hurt Callie, you won't get anything from me."

The older kidnapper almost smiled. "Don't play the I've-lost-everything-so-there's-nothing-more-you-can-do-to-me card, kid. You're a long way from that."

"Maybe," I admitted, "but I can still keep quiet for a long time. It might save you some time and some effort if we make a bargain."

"Keep talking," the dark-haired kidnapper urged me.

"Okay," I replied. "I know there's not much you're willing to give me just to get the access code. If I refuse to give it to you, you can take the case to some deserted spot, open it, get the parchment out, and be out of there long before the police have gotten there. It's not going to do you any good, though."

"Why not?" the blond kidnapper asked.

"The manuscript isn't in the case," I told them.

"Didn't you make sure he had the manuscript?" the older crook shouted at his younger partner.

"I did," the younger one insisted. "It was there. He's bluffing."  
"No," I said. "The parchment that's in this case is a fake. We found the real one, but it got stolen. I confess we were trying to trap you, but I think you've already figured that one out."

"I told you about those others," the blond crook said.

"I know, I know," the other replied. "The story adds up. But if that's the case, you don't have anything to bargain with."

"I do, actually," I told them. "I found the message in that manuscript."

The older crook nodded. "In that case, maybe we can do business. What kind of bargain do you have in mind?"

"You let Callie go," I said. "You also give me some proof that you really did let her go and aren't just holding her somewhere else. Once I'm sure she's free, I'll tell you the message."  
"You're not going to make a play for your own freedom?" the dark-haired kidnapper asked, raising his eyebrows a bit in surprise.

"I don't think there's any bargain to that effect that we can agree on," I replied. "If you let me go before I tell you, you have no guarantee that I'd really tell you. If you agree to let me go after I tell you, I have no guarantee that you'll really come through. With my bargain, neither of us has to completely give up our ace first. You have nothing to lose by it."

"Oh, no," the kidnapper said sarcastically. "Only a witness who can identify both of us."

"Take it or leave it," I insisted, ignoring his remark.

The crooks looked at each other. Finally, the older one said, "We'll think about it. Give you an answer tomorrow. For now, let's get out of here."

As the dark-haired crook tried to hustle me back outside, the other held him up. "Wait. What about the old coot in the basement?"

"What about him?" the older one asked.

"What if he gets loose?" the blond one replied.

"If what this kid says about the manuscript being stolen is true, then Sinclair's not going to go to the police," the older one told him.

Sinclair? Did the kidnapper mean that Sinclair was behind the stolen manuscript? That didn't add up. And Sinclair was in the basement? Was he being held by these two, too?

I didn't have a chance to find out anything more as the two crooks herded me outside and back into the car. We headed away from Bayport, driving for about an hour. We finally stopped in a town called Hanover in back of a rundown hotel.

The kidnappers took me in the back way, practically pushing me up the back stairs. I don't think this place had an elevator, and if it did I don't think I would have wanted to ride on it. They unlocked the door to Room 212 and led me inside.

The first thing I noticed – the only thing I noticed for a little while – was Callie, sitting in a chair, tied and gagged. At least, partially tied. It looked like she had been spending the last few hours trying to get free.

"Callie!" I said, and tried to rush toward her. One of the crooks held me back.

Callie's eyes widened when she saw me. I'm not sure if she was happy to see me or horrified that I'd been captured too or a little bit of both.

"It looks like you haven't been wasting your time while we've been gone," the blond crook said to her, retightening her bonds. When he'd finished, he asked, "Are you going to scream?"

Callie shook her head vigorously. The crook nodded, and took the gag out of her mouth.

She looked back over at me. "Frank! What happened? Are you all right?"

Now the older kidnapper let me go over to her. I covered the length of the room in three strides. When I got to her, I hugged Callie as well as I could.

"I'm fine," I told her. "You're the one I'm worried about. They haven't hurt you, have they?"

"No," Callie replied. "I've been so scared, though. But what happened to you? How did they catch you?"

I sighed. "Our plans for rescuing you went a little awry. But don't worry. Joe and Nancy are still free."

"Nancy?" Callie asked. "Nancy Drew?"

"Yeah," I replied.

I was about to explain at least a little bit, but the blond kidnapper cut me off. He grabbed me by the shoulder, pulled me to my feet, and said, "This is all very touching, but we've got things to talk over."

He made me sit in a chair in another corner of the room and tied my hands and feet. When he had finished, he warned both of us, "Neither of you better try to move or get loose. We'll be watching."

He and his partner went to the other end of the room and began to talk in quiet tones. For the first time, I really took a good look around the room. It looked like a base of operations for planning some military move. There were maps spread out on the table and the beds, photographs stuck on the walls, and a laptop with a projector connected to it. Many of the photographs showed pages out of illuminated manuscripts, or rather one illuminated manuscript, as I supposed they were all probably pages from the one that was at the core of the mystery.

I tried to talk to Callie again, but the kidnappers told me to keep quiet. I cast her an apologetic glance, and she managed to muster a smile. I wracked my brain trying to think of an escape plan – we had to get out of there.

After about fifteen minutes, the two kidnappers finished their conversation. The younger one began taking down the photographs on the wall, while the other opened the laptop, evidently to turn it off. He wavered for a moment, and then he turned on the projector instead. The bare patch of wall in front of it was lit up with a projection of a painting that showed a very busy and confused picture of a medieval-style battle.

"What are you doing?" the younger crook asked. "You said we were gonna get out of here."

"I know, I know," the other replied impatiently. "It's just that we're so close. I just have a feeling that I'm going to see the answer any minute."

"Not without those last clues, you're not," the blond one said.

"That Drew girl thinks there isn't a clue in the two other pages I showed her," the older kidnapper replied. "If she's right, then maybe we're only missing one clue, and maybe we can get it anyway."

This surprising me. When would have this guy been talking to Nancy? Unless…

"Craig Miller?" I said out loud.

The two kidnappers turned to look at me, both looking a little surprised. The older one recovered quickly and nodded.

"Not bad," he said. "Miss Drew must have talked about me."

"We don't have time for this," the other kidnapper spoke up. "We've got to get packed up and get out of here."

"Wait, maybe this kid can sort out what the clues mean," Miller said. "How about it, Hardy? If you can tell me where the treasure is, I just might be willing to let you and your girlfriend go."

"I won't count on that," I replied, "but I might be willing to think about it. You'll have to tell me about any other clues that you've found, though."

"All right," Miller agreed. He gestured at the projection on the wall. "This mural was on the wall of an old monastery in England that was dedicated to Saint John the Apostle. During the turmoil between the Protestants and the Catholics during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the monastery was mostly destroyed. That would have put an end to my treasure hunt long before it even began, except that someone decided to copy the mural onto a large piece of parchment. The trouble with it is that doubtless some of the detail has been lost or copied incorrectly. That might throw a wrench into the whole endeavor."

"But what makes you think this picture has anything to do with the treasure?" I asked.

"The manuscript," Miller replied. "See, I've been looking for this treasure for years, and I'm not wholly inept at the whole thing. I located more than just three pages of the manuscript, but I only told Nancy Drew about the three that I couldn't decode. I had already gotten the messages from the others. Several of them, taken together, made me realize that a picture of the Battle of Hastings in a monastery of Saint John held the key to the treasure."

"So that led you to this painting," I concluded for him.

"Exactly," Miller replied. "There are three other clues that I know of, but I can't make any sense of them. There's Miss Drew's 'where dragons roam' and the other two are 'hooves of the charger' and 'water and stone.' I don't suppose either of those mean anything to you?"

They didn't right at the moment. Neither did my clue, "sword of the king." There were a lot of swords and horses and stones in the picture, and I supposed that the one very prominent warrior in the middle of the picture was probably King Harold, but there were no dragons or water.

After staring at the painting for a few minutes, I noticed a curious detail on the right side of the painting – two snaked coiled around each other with their heads facing the same way. _Hwār wurmes rome._ Those were the original words of the clue. Hadn't Ned said that ' _wurmes'_ didn't just mean 'dragons,' but also could mean 'snakes'?

I was starting to see where this was going. I looked around the painting until I found a horse with its front legs and hooves at a strange angle. Then I mentally drew lines starting at Harold's sword, the snakes, and the horse's hooves. They all intersected right on top of one of Harold's men. What that meant wasn't immediately clear to me, until I thought of the "water and stone" clue.

"Huh," I said aloud. "That's interesting."

"What?" Miller asked. "Did you find something?"

"Maybe, maybe not," I replied. "Let Callie go and I'll tell you."

"No, Frank. I'm not going to leave unless they let us both go," Callie spoke up.

Miller's partner was impatient. "You said those other kids might find us here. We've got to pack up and clear out."

"What are you going to do with us?" Callie asked.

"We've got to take them along," Miller said, speaking to the other kidnapper instead of Callie. "If this kid knows where the treasure is, we've got to get him to talk."

"I've got no problem with that," the other replied. "I don't much want this whole thing to wind up being a waste of time."

If these guys were going to move us again, I had to find a way to let anyone who might have trailed us this far know where we were being taken. I saw a pen lying on one of the counter, and an idea came to me.

"Where are you taking us?" I asked.

"What difference does it make to you?" the younger kidnapper countered.

"Maybe none," I replied. "I'd just like to know."

"So would I," Miller spoke up. "What do you have in mind, Dalton?"

So his companion's name was Dalton. I made a mental note of that.

"I was thinking we could go lay low at Bryan's uncle's place in Bridgeport," Dalton said.

"What? Are you crazy?" Miller asked. "With Bryan in jail and connected with us, that's the first place the cops will look."

"Yeah, they probably already did," Dalton said. "That's the whole idea. We'll call the old man and ask him. If the cops have already been there, they won't come again."

"They might have set up a stakeout," Miller reminded him.

"On a harmless-looking old guy like that?" Dalton asked. "Come on. They just have to ask all his neighbors, and he'll tell them he can't stand his worthless nephew. The cops wouldn't waste their time."

Miller agreed, but he still seemed reluctant. As they continued to hastily pack their stuff, I asked them if they would untie me so I could help.

"It's not a bad idea," Dalton said.

"He might try to jump us and escape," Miller replied. "It wouldn't work, but we'd be better off without the noise. I bet she wouldn't try something like that, though."

They untied Callie and told her to start helping them pack up. As she rubbed her wrists, I tried to get her to understand that I wanted her to come over next to me. When she was close enough, I whispered my plan to her.

Callie nodded and unobtrusively picked up the pen that I had seen on the counter. While Dalton and Miller were distracted by their packing, she quickly scribbled something onto the wall next to one of the lampstands and then pulled the stand over an inch to hide it.


	19. To Bridgeport

Chapter XIX: To Bridgeport

Joe

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed when the person Nancy and I found in the cellar of that old farmhouse wasn't Frank or Callie. However I felt about it, though, there was clearly only one thing to do.

"What happened?" Nancy asked as she took out Sinclair's gag while I cut the ropes with my pocketknife.

"Thank goodness you found me," Sinclair gasped the minute he could say anything at all. "I thought for sure I'd never get out of here."  
"Who tied you up?" I asked. "And why? And when?"

"Some idiot named Dalton Miller," Sinclair replied, "and his brother. I think his name was Craig. They got it into their heads that they could find the treasure. I should have never trusted that Kelting."

"Whoa, back up," I told him. "I think we missed a few pages somewhere in there. How about we take it from the top?"

Sinclair took in a deep breath. "I've been trying to find the treasure for years. Part of my family history. To do it, I've had to track down dozens of experts, historians, archaeologists, all sorts of people, not to mention the pages of the manuscript."

"I think we were already up to speed on all of that, more or less," I replied. "At any rate, any part of that you didn't outright tell us, we already guessed."

"Stop interrupting him, Joe," Nancy told me. "Just let him tell his story."

"About ten years ago," Sinclair continued, "I came across a fellow by the name of Geoffrey Kelting. He's a retired professor who lives in Bridgeport. He knows a lot about the legend of the treasure, so I went to him for information and advice. We wound up becoming friends, or so I thought."  
"The prowler at my house was named Myron Kelting," Nancy commented. "Is there a connection?"

"Who's interrupting him now?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Yeah, there's probably a connection," Sinclair said. "I found out only a few days ago that Geoff Kelting has a side business – burglary by commission. He has four or five young guys, a couple of them his nephews, and they do the actual stealing. Kelting's the mastermind."

"I bet Kelting wasn't too happy when you put that one together," I commented. "But wait. It was the Millers who were holding you. How do they come in?"

"I'm coming to that," Sinclair said. "The Millers did a couple of jobs with Kelting's guys. That's how they found out about the treasure. They convinced one of Kelting's nephews to double cross his uncle and steal a bunch of Kelting's information. Beyond that, I'm not sure of all the details. This is just put together from what I've overheard."

"Just tell us everything you know," I urged him, "and fast. We've still got to find Frank and Callie and get them away from these people."

"They've got your brother?" Sinclair asked. "Then we do need to hurry. All right. The Millers and Kelting's bunch have both been following me, trying to get anything I might have that they didn't, especially the page that my ancestors had. I imagine they've probably both been following you around, too. The day I came to you and Frank, Joe, I had just been talking to Kelting when I saw Frank come into the coffee shop. The next morning, I went in there again and met Dalton Miller. I didn't know who he was, and he simply said he thought he knew where the page was hidden. He asked me to meet him here. The rest you can probably guess."

"No wonder we haven't been able to get hold of you," I commented. "We've tried to call several times."  
"This clears up a lot," Nancy said. "It must have been the Miller gang who stole the journal pages from the Hardys and who kidnapped Frank and Callie. They also wanted me to decode the pages of the journal that no one had gotten the message from. Myron Kelting must have followed Craig Miller to River Heights, and it must have been the other members of the Kelting gang who stole the manuscript page from Frank and Joe. The trouble is that none of this is helping us find Frank and Callie."

She was right. And finding Frank and Callie was the only thing I really cared about.

"Do you have any idea where the Millers might have gone?" I asked Sinclair.

"They said they had a hotel in Hanover," Sinclair replied. "The Economy Inn, or something."

"Good enough for me," I said. "I guess we'd better give you a ride back to Bayport. Then we'll head straight for Hanover."  
"What about the police?" Nancy asked.

"We'll talk about it on the way," I replied.

Sinclair was a little slow from being tied up for several days. I know the feeling, but I couldn't help being impatient to get on the move. I asked Nancy to drive so I could call up Iola and Tony and tell them to stop their teams' searches and reassemble in Hanover.

Nancy still thought we should call in the Hanover police. After all, Olaf didn't have any jurisdiction there, so he couldn't possible flub everything up again. Even so, I was done with putting the case in the hands of anyone else besides me. Once Frank and Callie were safe, then I didn't care if Olaf personally led the arrest team for the Millers and the Keltings, but until then, I was doing things my way. Nancy didn't like it, but she finally went along with it.

After we dropped off Sinclair in Bayport, we broke all records getting to Hanover. It's a small town, smaller than Bayport, and there weren't too many hotels in it. The Economy Inn wasn't hard to find. Calling it "economy" was putting things in the best light possible. The place was a rundown dump. Tony, Phil, and Jerry were waiting for us when we got there.

"What's the plan?" Tony asked as Nancy and I jumped out of the car.

"First we've got to find out what room the Millers are in," I said. "Where're Iola and Chet and Biff?"

"Probably stuck on the road somewhere if they're coming in the Queen," Jerry replied, shaking his head. "Even if that old jalopy's running, it'll still probably take them an hour to get."

"Then let's get this over with," I said. "Of all the mysteries I've ever worked on, this one has got to be my least favorite. Let's get it behind us."

"Even worse than that time you were tied up in a cave with nothing to eat for two days?" Jerry asked.

"Okay," I admitted, "I wasn't thinking of that one. Still, let's get on with this."

"A place like this is probably a regular hideout for crooks of all kinds," Nancy commented. "We won't get much help from the front desk. Let's see if we can find any housekeepers who are in a talkative mood."

We went in through a back way. At Nancy's suggestion, we guys hung back while she started wandering around, looking for one of the staff to question. She was only gone about ten minutes before she came back.

"We're in some luck," she said. "Two guys matching the Millers' descriptions and another guy had a room here."

"Had?" I repeated.

Nancy nodded glumly. "They checked out last night. They were in room 212, though, and this place is probably one of the last hotels on earth that still uses actual keys for the rooms."

"Good," I replied. "Let's see if they left any clues behind."

We went to the upstairs hallway and found the room in question. Nancy had a lockpicking kit in her purse and started working on the lock while the rest of us stood next to her, trying to look as non-suspicious as five teenagers breaking into a sleazy hotel room can look.

"Do you always carry those tools around?" Tony asked Nancy.

"They come in handy," Nancy told him.

"I guess so," Tony replied, although I think he still thought it was weird. Honestly, I think it's kinda weird, too, but I've seen and done enough to know that even carrying lockpicking tools in your purse isn't the weirdest thing even supposedly ordinary people do.

Nancy had the door open in less than a minute. The housekeepers had already cleaned the room, sort of. At any rate, they had evidently made the beds and taken the used towels out of the bathroom. Otherwise, there wasn't much evidence of a whole lot of cleaning. Under ordinary circumstances, it'd be gross, but under these circumstances, I was glad.

We began looking around for any clue the kidnappers or Frank or Callie might have left behind. Phil bent down to look under the bed, but immediately straightened up and made a face.

"I don't think there's any clues under there," he said, "but if you're looking for clues to people who stayed in this room a couple years ago, I think they're still there."

I noticed one of the lampstands was crooked. Thinking there might be something behind it, I pulled the stand out. Scribbled in blue ink on the wall were the words:

"Bryan's uncle Bridgeport C + F"

"Hey, everybody, I've got it!" I said.

As the others gathered around to look, Jerry said, "'C and F' is pretty clear – Callie and Frank. And Bridgeport's not too hard to figure out. But what does 'Bryan's uncle' mean?"

Nancy and I looked at each other.

"Sinclair said that one of Kelting's nephews had joined the Millers, and Kelting lives in Bridgeport," Nancy said. "But why would the Millers go to him? They're rivals in this thing."

I tightened my jaw. "Who knows? I do know this, though, if they're rivals and the Millers have taken Frank and Callie there, then they're about to get caught in the crossfire."

"Sinclair can probably give us Kelting's address," Nancy replied. "Let's go."

"I think we missed something," Phil said.

"No time to explain," I told him, already running for the door.

The others followed me. We all piled back into the cars we'd come in, Tony and the others following Nancy and me. On the way, I called Sinclair and got the address from him. He was pretty reluctant to give it to me and told me I should call the police, but he finally gave in. Then I called Iola.

"Where are you guys?" I asked her.

Iola gave a frustrated sigh. "We're coming. I'm not sure if it'll be this century, so you don't need to wait for us."

"We didn't," I told her. "Turn that bundle of spare parts around and head for Bridgeport instead. We found a lead that Frank and Callie might be there."

About an hour later, we were pulling up a few blocks away from Geoffrey Kelting's address. Tony parked behind us and a few minutes later the Queen rattled to a stop behind him. We held a brief strategy meeting to decide on what to do.

"There are two Millers," I said. "Sinclair said that there are four or five in the Kelting gang, not counting the head man himself. One of those joined up with the Millers, though, and he's probably the one the cops bagged last night. That means there could be five or six guys in there."

"We can take 'em," Biff said, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand. "I've still got a score to settle with three of them."

"If we try to fight our way through this, some of us are going to get hurt, to say nothing of what they might do to Frank and Callie," Nancy pointed out. "We need a better plan than that."

"What would you suggest?" Iola asked.

"How about to begin with Joe and I see if we can hear anything at the windows?" Nancy suggested. "We might be able to get a feel for whether all the crooks are in there and where they've got Frank and Callie at."

"Good idea," I agreed. "If we can find that out, then we can find a way to get the two of them out of there before any fireworks start. Just in case anything goes wrong, though, we're going to need to get out of here fast. While Nancy and I are gone, the rest of you stay in the cars and be ready to pull out at a moment's notice."

"Still think we shouldn't have called the police?" Nancy asked as the two of us walked toward the Kelting house. It was broad daylight, so we were way less likely to be noticed walking normally toward the house than we would have been if we'd acted like we were sneaking up to it.

"They would have just slowed us down in Hanover," I reminded her. "They would have had to get a search warrant and the whole bit."

"True," Nancy admitted. "It's a bit of a double-edged sword. Make it too hard to search someplace and people like the Millers get away. Make it too easy and innocent people get taken advantage of."

"Now's not the time for politics," I reminded her. "We're here."

Fortunately for us, the house's lawn was full of trees and bushes that made it impossible to see into any of the windows from the street. That was the plan, I suppose, so nobody could spy on Kelting. It also meant that if Nancy and I were careful, we could probably get to a window without being spotted from inside.

As we got closer, we heard what sounded like an argument coming from the back. We crouched next to one of the windows, just barely peeking into the room. There were four people in there – an old guy who had to be Kelting, the burglar who had taken the journal and who I assumed was Dalton Miller, another guy who looked enough like him that he must have been Craig Miller, and a muscley young guy.

"First you get my own nephew to steal from me, then you try to frame me for kidnapping that girl, and now you expect me to cover for you?" Kelting was shouting.

"Hey, we've got the answer to the whole riddle," Dalton replied. "We'll cut you in if you get us out of this jam."

"Don't listen to 'em, Mr. Kelting," the muscle guy said. "They've been nothing but trouble since the first time we've seen them."

"I want those two kids out of this house now," Kelting told the Millers.

"Nobody's going to find them," Craig insisted. "We stashed them in the hall closet upstairs, so they can't get away either. This is a good deal you're passing up, not to mention your only chance of getting the treasure. Don't forget I've got all the clues and the solution."

Nancy lowered herself from the window and gestured for me to do the same. She pointed at one of the trees in the yard that grew right up against the house and whispered, "I bet we can get up there."


	20. Rescue

Chapter XX: Rescue

Nancy

"Stay here while I go get a couple of the guys," Joe whispered to me.

I nodded, and he made his way through the overgrown yard of the Kelting house. I took a chance at peeking in through the window again. The argument was still going full-force and even seemed to be heating up.

A sudden thought hit me. Geoffrey Kelting was obviously not pleased to have Frank and Callie under his roof. What if he decided to do something to them before Joe could get back?

I bit my lip, trying to convince myself that the best course of action really was to just wait. I knew I should, but I couldn't quite make myself believe it. Making up my mind all of a sudden, I grabbed one of the lowest branches of the tree and started climbing up.

The tree was an easy one to climb and I reached a window on the second floor without much trouble. The window looked in on an empty bedroom, but it was locked and I couldn't get it open.

"Nancy?" I heard Joe call softly from the ground.

I looked down to see him, Biff, and Jerry standing underneath the tree. I shook my head at them to tell them I wasn't having any luck. Before I was able to look at the window again, my luck changed, although hardly for the better.

A man had come into the room and saw me at the window. He whipped the window open and grabbed me by the wrist, saying, "What are you doing here?"

I was too startled to think and I began to fight back. That made me lose my balance on the branch that I was perched on and I would have fallen if the guy hadn't been holding onto me. The sudden shift in weight did pull him forward so that he leaned out the window and saw Joe, Biff, and Jerry below. With an angry grunt, he hauled me up through the window.

"Just who are you?" he growled, still holding my wrist in a tight grip.

Without waiting for me to answer, he dragged me toward the door and out into the hall. Shouting for his confederates, he pulled me down the staircase to the first floor. It was an old-fashioned staircase with a door at the bottom. I noticed a lock on the knob.

That gave me an idea for my only chance at escape. I stopped struggling to get away. As I had hoped, the guy had loosened his grip on my wrist by the time we reached the bottom of the stairs.

I had to time it carefully for this to go off right. Just when the crook had passed through the doorway but before he had pulled me through, I suddenly yanked my wrist away. Before he had a chance to realize what had happened, I slammed the door shut and twisted the lock.

"Frank? Callie?" I called, rushing back up the steps.

"Nancy?" I heard Frank's voice reply from behind one of the doors in the hallway.

I ran to it and tried to open it, but it was locked. I could hear someone rattling at the door at the bottom of the stairs, so I knew I didn't have much time. I pulled out my lockpicking tools and got to work, forcing myself to keep calm so that my hands wouldn't shake. In about half a minute, I had the door unlocked.

Frank and Callie were sitting on the floor in the closet back to back. Frank had already mostly untied Callie's hands. I grabbed the pocketknife that I keep with my lockpicking tools and finished cutting them loose.

"Thanks, Nance," Frank said, getting to his feet and helping Callie to hers. "What's the situation look like?"

The pounding on the door to the staircase had stopped and there was some other commotion going on downstairs. My guess was that Joe and the others had decided to launch a full-scale attack when they saw me get grabbed.

"I hope not," I murmured. Then, in a louder voice, I said, "Come on. We can get out the same way I got in."

I led them to the window where I'd made my entrance. On the way, Frank held onto Callie's hand and didn't look like he intended to let go anytime soon.

"One of you climb down first," I told them.

"Go ahead, Callie. I'll be right behind you," Frank said.

"Okay," Callie replied.

She was about to climb out the window when we heard the door at the base of the steps fly open and running footsteps come up the stairs.

"You two stay here," Frank said.

In a flash, he positioned himself next to the open door to the room. The eavesdropper from the River Heights library, whom I assumed was also Myron Kelting, appeared in the doorway. He rushed toward Callie and me, but as he passed the door Frank tackled him.

Given the guy's surprise, it only took a few seconds for Frank to overpower him. Callie ran to get the ropes that she and Frank had been tied with and we used those to tie Myron up.

"That's one down," Callie said. "How many of these guys are there?"

"Six or seven," I replied. "We've still got a ways to go to catch them all."

The commotion downstairs had died down and someone called up the steps, "Myron! We've got those three from outside. Did you get the girl?"

"Yeah," Frank called back, no doubt hoping that one syllable wouldn't be enough for the others to recognize. Then he said to me in a lower voice, "Who did they get?"

"Joe, Biff, and Jerry," I told him grimly. "That means that Tony, Chet, Iola, and Phil are still free."

"Good enough," Frank said. "You two stay here with this guy and make sure he doesn't escape. I'll get the others."

While he climbed down the tree, Callie and I looked at our prisoner, who was struggling to escape.

"Are you all right?" I asked Callie.

"Yeah," she replied. "Thanks for everything you've done, Nancy. How did you get involved in this anyway?"

"It's a long story," I told her. "I'll tell you when we get out of here."

"Does it always feel like this?" Callie asked. "Kind of terrifying, but at the same time it feels good."

"What does?" I didn't quite understand what she meant.

"Catching crooks," Callie replied.

"Oh," I said. I thought for a moment and then I said, "Yeah. I guess it does."

Callie ran her hand through her hair. "Hmm. Maybe I'm starting to see what you guys like about this. At the same time, I wish it was over."

Just then we heard the creak of several people coming up the steps. Callie and I froze for a second. There was definitely more than one coming up.

"There's a blind turn at the top of the steps," Callie said in a low voice. "Why don't we hide behind it and then give the first one a hard push when he gets to the top of the steps?"

"It's worth a try," I agreed. "There was something else I noticed in the hall, too – fire extinguishers."

"Mm hmm." Callie nodded, catching on immediately.

We ran out into the hall and grabbed two fire extinguishers. Then we stood behind the blind turn in the hall, hearts thumping loudly. Just as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, there was a shout from the first floor. Whoever was coming up stopped.

"Now!" I whispered to Callie.

We both jumped out and rammed our shoulders into the first guy coming up the stairs, knocking him off balance so that he fell backwards against the others. Then we used the fire extinguisher to shoot two high-powered streams of water into their faces. Taken off guard, they went back downstairs, into the arms of Frank and his newly-arrived rescue party.

"What's the big idea, you two?" Joe asked, shaking water out of his face. I realized then that the guys Callie and I had jumped had been herding Joe, Jerry, and Biff up the stairs, which meant that those three had been on the receiving end of our ambush too. "This is some way to say 'thank you' to a rescue party, Callie."

"Sorry," Callie said with a grin. "Is this all of them?"

It looked that way. Callie and I had caught the Millers and one of Kelting's men. Frank and Tony had captured Kelting's other man, and Chet and Phil had collared Kelting himself.

"Callie! I'm so glad you're safe," Iola said, giving her best friend a hug.

Callie's other friends all added their relief at her rescue, as well as at Frank's. We all exchanged the bits and pieces of the story that not everyone knew about yet while Joe phoned the police.

"So it looks like another mystery down for Frank and Joe and Nancy," Chet commented.

"Not quite," Joe said as he hung up the phone. "We didn't find the treasure."  
"But that must be all the way over in England," Phil reminded him. "Even if you could just pick up and go over there, how would you even know where to start?"

"He's right," Jerry agreed. "That might be one mystery that you guys are going to have to leave unsolved."

"I don't think so," Frank said. We all turned to look at him. "I think I know exactly where the treasure is."


	21. Water and Stone

Epilogue: Water and Stone

Frank

Joe, Nancy, Callie, and I were sitting on the banks of a small river in the United Kingdom called the Godfrey. It was a little over a month since our adventure with the Kelting/Miller crew. A team of archaeologists was excavating the ruins of a tower that had once stood alongside it but was now mostly tumbled down. They expected to find the "treasure" at any time, and had invited the four of us to come and be present when they did, out of consideration for the help we had given them in learning its location.

"Any new mysteries come your way since that last one?" Joe asked Nancy.

"What do you think?" she replied. "Still, I had to take time out for this. I couldn't miss it."

"Frank, you've been holding out on us for ages about how you figured out where the treasure was," Callie said to me. "How did you know?"

"Yeah, come on, Frank," Joe added. "You haven't even told me, your own brother."

"Okay," I said. "I was saving it for now. Geoffrey Kelting had done most of the legwork in researching the so-called treasure, with a generous amount of help from Evan Sinclair. Craig and Dalton Miller, with the help of Kelting's backstabbing nephew Bryan, stole most of Kelting's information. They took credit for it themselves, but I don't think they really did too much."

"We've already got that part figured out," Joe told me. "Let's cut to the stuff we don't know."

I grinned. I always enjoy telling a story that Joe is impatient to hear the end of. Maybe I'm a little malicious, but that always makes me want to draw it out even longer. Today, though, I decided to humor him and just tell the story.

"From the clues in the illuminated manuscript, Kelting realized that the treasure was somehow tied to a mural painted on the wall of the same monastery where the manuscript was made. Even though the monastery, along with the mural, were destroyed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he managed to find a copy.

"However, there were two clues that Kelting couldn't make heads nor tails of – 'hooves of the charger' and 'water and stone'. There were also two that he hadn't found yet – 'where snakes roam' and 'sword of the king'. When the Millers let me have a look at the copy of the mural, I realized that three of those things – horse hooves, snakes, and a king's sword – were all in the painting and all seemed to be pointing in one direction or another. If you draw lines through each of those objects in the direction they're pointing, they intersect over one of the English soldiers."

"Yeah, we know all of that, too," Joe interrupted.

"Well, that got me thinking," I continued. "The soldier must be an important clue. I already guessed at that point that the 'treasure' was hidden near a body of water that was named after that soldier. Finding out his identity was the trick. I did some research and learned that the Godfrey River was named after one of the Englishmen who were killed in the Battle of Hastings, and that a decrepit stone tower stood on its banks. 'Water and stone.' You see?"

"Makes sense," Nancy said. "There's just one thing I don't understand. Why do you keep talking like the treasure isn't real?"

"Oh, I'm sure it's real," I replied. "I just have a hunch that the Millers and the Keltings would have been pretty disappointed if they had actually found it."

Before the others could ask me what I meant, Dr. Devon, the head archaeologist on the expedition called us over.

"We think we're about to uncover it," he explained.

The archaeologists were carefully brushing off dirt from a large, rectangular object. As they worked, it became clear that what they were uncovering was a tomb. There was an inscription on it, which Dr. Devon looked at closely.

"This is the tomb of Godfrey himself," he said excitedly.

"That's it?" Callie asked, sounding disappointed. "That's the treasure?"

"It was to the person who made the illuminated manuscript and painted the mural," I told her.

"How did you know?" Joe asked.

"I learned that Godfrey was a very pious man who gave generously to the Monastery of Saint John, where the creator of the manuscript lived," I explained. "He was practically considered a saint himself. After the Battle of Hastings, the Norman invaders left the bodies of the English who were killed on the battlefield. The monks must have secretly buried Godfrey here, but thinking that his body ought to eventually be honored as a relic, they set up all the clues so that Godfrey would eventually be found."

"I think you're right, Frank," Dr. Devon said. "Their 'treasure' might not be worth much monetarily, but it was worth a great deal in other ways to the monks. Even today, it's a great archaeological find."

"Well," Callie said a little later as we were walking toward our rental car, "I guess that was pretty cool, even if it wasn't gold and silver and jewels."

"Do you still like the feel of a solved mystery?" Nancy asked.

Callie smiled and nodded. "Yeah. In fact, next time we have a date, Frank, and someone interrupts us to offer you a mystery, I want in on it."

 _A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read_ The Ancient Pages. _I would especially like to thank everyone who has left reviews for this story: Cherylann Rivers, max2013, Jilsen, ulstergirl, Torchwood Cardiff, and guest reviewers._


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